The advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has driven impressive gains for many stocks. However, no company has seen more absolute net gains in market cap than Nvidia (NVDA 1.65%). Indeed, it's now the world's largest publicly traded company thanks to AI, worth a whopping $4.3 trillion.
But just how much would you have made with an investment in this stock three years ago, shortly before the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT sparked a flood of AI investment?
In the right place at the right time with the right solution
So much has happened since then that it seems like it was much longer ago. But it's true -- the public version of ChatGPT only debuted in Nov. 2022. Alphabet's Gemini (then called Bard) was released in February of the following year, and Microsoft unveiled its AI-powered conversational assistant Copilot that September. Corporate-level and non-consumer developmental AI work was being done before 2022, but only in the past few years has this technology ushered in a full-blown gold rush.
Image source: Getty Images.
All of this has worked in Nvidia's favor. Its graphics processing units (GPUs) remain the market's go-to source for the computing power behind artificial intelligence applications. Some estimates suggest the company's market share still stands in the ballpark of 90%. That's why the stock is up 883% since Aug. 2022, meaning a $5,000 investment then would be worth a little over $49,000 as of this writing.
No repeat on the horizon, but still ...
That was a once-in-a-decade kind of opportunity. The feat won't likely be repeated between now and 2028.
Nevertheless, the artificial intelligence movement is still going strong. Precedence Research believes the AI data center market is set to grow at an average annual pace of more than 28% through 2034. Nvidia still features prominently in that growth, too. Even if another 883% gain isn't in the cards, this stock remains a compelling growth bet.
