What If You Had Invested in NVIDIA 10 Years Ago?

NVDA: all at once or every month?

Take $12,000: all of it on day one, or $1,000 a month for a year. Across every starting month since 1999 (323 of them), the lump sum was ahead after 12 months in 228 (71%). The lump sum usually won, but roughly one start in 3 favored spreading it out. The best case for monthly investing was a start in January 2002, when it finished the year 289% ahead.

Worst drop

NVDA's worst fall in this history was -87.2%, a near wipe-out, from December 2001 to September 2002. Getting back to the old high took until October 2006: 49 months from the bottom and 4.8 years from the peak. $1,000 invested at that peak shrank to about $128 at the low.

NVIDIA dividends

NVDA paid $0.52 per share over the last 12 months, quarterly. At $181.60 that is 0.29%, a small yield; nearly all of the return has come from the price. From 2020 to 2025 the yearly payout grew +20.1% a year, well ahead of inflation. The yearly total did not fall once in the last ten years. Amounts are adjusted for splits.

Yield = each year’s dividends divided by the price at the end of the year.

NVDA dividend history: last 12 payments

Stock splits

• June 2000: 2-for-1
• September 2001: 2-for-1
• April 2006: 2-for-1
• September 2007: 1.5-for-1
• July 2021: 4-for-1
• June 2024: 10-for-1

One share bought before 2000 is 480 shares today.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA began as a maker of graphics chips for video games. The same chips turned out to be ideal for the math behind modern AI, and from 2023 demand from data centers turned NVIDIA into one of the most valuable companies in the world.

The ride has been extremely bumpy. The stock lost more than 80% after the dot-com bust, about 80% again in 2008, roughly half in 2018 and about two thirds from late 2021 to late 2022. Anyone who held through all of it was rewarded, but few people actually do.

NVIDIA has split its stock several times, most recently 4-for-1 in 2021 and 10-for-1 in 2024. Its dividend is tiny relative to the price.

Why NVIDIA, and not just any chip maker

The chips matter, but so does the software. NVIDIA released CUDA in 2006, a platform that lets programmers use its graphics chips for general computing. Over the following years most AI research was built on it, so when demand for AI training exploded, the tools, libraries and engineers were already tied to NVIDIA hardware. Data-center sales now make up the large majority of its revenue, far more than gaming.

You may already own a lot of it

NVIDIA is now one of the largest companies in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100. Anyone who holds VOO, VTI, QQQ or a tech fund such as VGT or SMH already has a meaningful slice of their money in it. Before adding NVDA directly, it is worth checking how much you hold through funds.

Questions about NVDA

How much would $10,000 invested in NVDA 20 years ago be worth today?

About $3,220,429 with dividends reinvested, invested at the November 2006 close: 32104.3% in total, or 33.5% a year.

When does NVDA pay dividends?

In the last 12 months the payments went out in March, June, September and December, $0.52 per share in total.

Did NVDA beat the S&P 500?

Yes. Over the last 20 years it was ahead by 22.9 percentage points a year: +33.5% a year for NVDA against +10.6% for SPY, dividends reinvested. It also fell harder at its worst (-87.2% against -50.8% for SPY over the same history).