The year was 1999. Steve Jobs had recently returned to lead Apple. Intel was the dominant force in semiconductors. And a little-known chipmaker named Nvidia made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
It took less than three years for Nvidia to ascend into the S&P 500 — replacing the disgraced oil-trading conglomerate Enron, no less.
But even then, few people would have bet that the company would go on to become the best-performing stock of the last quarter-century, posting a total return of 591,078% since its initial public offering, including reinvested dividends. It’s a difficult number to comprehend and a testament, in part, to the financial mania brewing around artificial intelligence and how investors have come to see Nvidia — which makes the cutting-edge chips powering the technology — as the single-biggest winner of the boom.