Nvidia spent 1003% more on warranty claims in 2025 than the year before according to a new report, with the total cost almost reaching $900 million

The Shocking Rise in Nvidia Warranty Claims Costs for 2025

A new report reveals a startling trend: Nvidia spent 1003% more on warranty claims in 2025 than the year before, with the total cost almost reaching $900 million. While one might expect such deep industry insights from a major tech publication, the source of this revelation is surprisingly a trade newsletter for 'warrant management professionals' called Warranty Week. Thanks to diligent reporting and compelling charts, we now have concrete data showing that Nvidia's warranty costs skyrocketed to nearly $900 million in 2025, marking a figure ten times higher than the previous year.

This eye-opening discovery was first spotted by Videocardz, which highlighted Warranty Week’s detailed breakdown of the GPU industry. The report features a straightforward chart comparing total expenditure on paid claims by AMD and Nvidia, data scraped directly from their financial reports. While the figures cover all products deemed 'discrete GPUs'—including gaming and workstation graphics cards, AI accelerators, and laptop chips—the disparity between the two giants is stark. Nvidia sells considerably more GPUs than its competitors, which naturally contributes to a higher raw claim total, but the year-over-year explosion in costs tells a much more complex story.

The 2025 Explosion: From Millions to Nearly $900 Million

To understand the magnitude of this increase, one only needs to look at the numbers from the previous years. In 2024, AMD and Nvidia paid out fairly similar amounts: approximately $110 million for AMD and just $81 million for Nvidia. However, the landscape shifted massively in a single year. By 2025, the situation had changed dramatically, with Nvidia's warranty claims surging to $894 million compared to AMD's $238 million.

The data reveals that this was not a uniform increase throughout the year. For most of 2025, Nvidia’s claim payouts appeared relatively normal:

• Q1: Total reached $147 million.
• Q2: The figure dropped to $80 million.
• Q3: Costs climbed back up to $156 million.

It was only in the final three months of 2025 that things went "bananas," with warranty claim costs exploding to a total of $511 million. This sharp spike is the primary driver behind the staggering 1003% increase compared to the previous year's baseline.

Beyond Meltygate: Why Did Costs Soar?

One might be tempted to point a finger at "Meltygate"—the high-profile incidents involving melted RTX graphics cards with 12VHPWR connectors—as the primary cause for this surge. However, experts suggest this is unlikely to be the sole explanation. Discrete GPU-based products often come with multi-year warranties, meaning a significant number of these claims in 2025 likely relate to cards purchased well before the connector issues arose.

Instead, the real story lies in market dynamics and product volume:

• Price Increases: Graphics cards and other GPU products sharply rose in price during this period, continuing to do so into 2026. Higher product values naturally lead to higher claim costs per unit.
• Product Proliferation: Both vendors released significantly more products in 2025 compared to 2024. For example, AMD launched only nine new GPUs two years ago (with just one gaming card), whereas last year they churned out 23 different models across every discrete GPU sector.
• Nvidia's Market Flood: While the difference was less drastic for Nvidia, they still released more SKUs in 2025 than in 2024. The company flooded the gaming market with a wealth of RTX 50-series models, alongside a massive volume of AI accelerators.

The data supports this theory through warranty claim rates as a percentage of sales. While Nvidia's rate was around 0.2% for Q1 and Q2, it increased to just over 0.3% in Q3 before jumping to an alarming 0.9% in the final quarter. Compared to 2024, Nvidia’s final claim rate last year was 800% greater, indicating a genuine spike in failure rates or claim frequency beyond just product value inflation.

The Unanswered Question of Reliability

Picking apart exactly why these figures are so much larger remains a puzzle for the industry. With so many different SKUs from a multitude of vendors and the sheer volume of AI accelerators sold last year, it is perhaps not surprising that there was such a notable jump in warranty claims. Only AMD and Nvidia will know for sure why the number of claims increased so drastically in 2025. However, if you are one of the many customers affected by these issues, at least you can take comfort in knowing that you weren't alone in experiencing the surge in warranty claims during this turbulent year.