If You Bought 1 Share of Nvidia at Its IPO, Here's How Many Shares You'd Own Now

Key Points

• Artificial intelligence (AI) and stock splits are Wall Street's two most-prolific trends.

• AI titan Nvidia has navigated its way through six forward stock splits since going public in January 1999.

• Despite Nvidia's well-defined competitive advantages, headwinds are mounting for the stock market's AI darling.

What do you get when you put Wall Street's two hottest trends -- artificial intelligence (AI) and stock splits -- together? The stock market's largest public company, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA).

A stock split is a tool public companies have available to adjust their share price and outstanding share count by the same factor. These adjustments can be used to increase the share price (in a reverse split) or to make shares more nominally affordable (in a forward split).

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AI titan Nvidia is no stranger to making its high-flying stock more affordable for everyday investors.

Image source: Getty Images.

Unpacking Nvidia's stock-split history

Nvidia's initial public offering (IPO) took place on Jan. 12, 1999, at $12 per share. Over the last 26-plus years, Wall Street's AI giant has completed six stock splits:

• June 2000: 2-for-1
• September 2001: 2-for-1
• April 2006: 2-for-1
• September 2007: 3-for-2
• July 2021: 4-for-1
• June 2024: 10-for-1

A single share purchased for $12 at Nvidia's 1999 IPO would have expanded to 480 shares today and would be worth $73,584, not including dividends, as of the closing bell on July 1.

Can Nvidia maintain its parabolic climb?

Nvidia's historic ascent is a reflection of the insatiable enterprise demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs). The Hopper and Blackwell account for the bulk of AI-GPUs deployed in AI-accelerated data centers.

In addition, CEO Jensen Huang is intent on maintaining his company's moat. Huang is overseeing an aggressive innovation timeline that'll bring a new advanced chip to market annually. No direct competitors have come close to matching or surpassing the compute capabilities of Nvidia's AI hardware.

But maintaining its spot atop the pedestal won't be easy. Many of Nvidia's top customers by net sales are internally developing their own substantially cheaper AI-GPUs, which can cost Nvidia valuable data-center real estate or delay upgrade cycles.

Furthermore, every game-changing innovation for the last three decades has endured a bubble-bursting event. All technologies need time to mature, including AI. If history were to rhyme, Nvidia stock could be hit hard.

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Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.