The year was 1999. Steve Jobs had recently returned to lead Apple. Intel was the dominant force in semiconductors. And a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
It took less than three years for Nvidia to break into the S&P 500, replacing disgraced oil trading conglomerate Enron.
But even then, few would have expected the company to become the best-performing stock of the past quarter century, with a total return of 591,078% since its IPO, including reinvested dividends. It’s a difficult number to comprehend and partly a testament to the financial mania surrounding artificial intelligence and the way investors have come to see Nvidia — which makes the cutting-edge chips that power the technology — as the biggest winner of the boom. .
