Could a $25,000 Investment in Nvidia Stock Make You a Millionaire?
If you had invested that much in the chipmaker 10 years ago and held on, your stake would be worth more than $4 million today.
By Jennifer Saibil
Nvidia (NVDA 0.93%) is the most valuable company in the world, and the only one with a market cap of more than $5 trillion. If you had invested $25,000 in it 10 years ago and held on through the ups and downs that followed, you'd have a stake worth more than $4 million today.
However, the stock has been growing at a more modest pace recently. It's up just 7% this year -- almost precisely as much as the broad market S&P 500 index. So is there still a chance that a $25,000 investment in Nvidia made today could make you into a millionaire?
Nvidia is still at the top of its game
Nvidia's story is unusual, and its rise to megacap status was unexpected. There were plenty of investors who recognized it as a great company even before the artificial intelligence (AI) trend sent its revenues skyrocketing a few years ago, but at that time, its graphics processing units (GPUs), the basis of generative AI today, were more widely used to power video games, edit video, and mine cryptocurrency.
The stampede of business that came from the AI revolution sent its sales, profits, and stock price into the stratosphere, and the good news is, the revolution is far from over. The company has been reporting accelerating growth, and it's launching new products and architectures at a dizzying pace in its bid to stay ahead of competitors.
For instance, it's now rolling out its latest chip architecture, the Vera Rubin line.
That integrated stack, which combines the Rubin GPU with its new Vera CPU (central processing unit), will deliver 35 times higher inference power than the previous architecture, Blackwell. Moreover, even with the new processors set to start shipping in the second half of this year, its Blackwell processors continue to sell at a high rate; Amazon Web Services (AWS) alone is ordering 1 million Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips in its efforts to build capacity for its cloud clients.
It's noteworthy that Nvidia has decided to pursue a new opportunity in CPUs, which will become increasingly more important in data centers geared toward powering agentic AI. CEO Jensen Huang has said that he sees a $200 billion addressable market for the company in CPUs, and that he anticipates $1 trillion in sales of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs alone across 2026 and 2027.
Can it grow fast enough?
This is all exciting, but from an investing standpoint, will it be enough to significantly grow your money? As Nvidia's revenue base further expands from its already enormous level, can its growth continue to accelerate?
Nvidia's revenue increased 85% year over year in its fiscal 2027 first quarter (which ended April 26), which is an impressive result. But let's assume that slows down over the next five years. Assuming a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 50%, in five years, its revenue would be almost $2 trillion. I would suggest that's unlikely at this stage. Assuming a 30% CAGR, its annual revenue would be $943 billion, which would be more than any other company brings in today.
To me, that sounds like investors should expect a major slowdown in growth soon, and a stock performance that will reflect that. Moreover, even if it does grow that fast, the stock's price-to-sales ratio would almost certainly fall to a much lower level than today's 20. Theorizing a P/S ratio of 10, Nvidia's market cap would be $9.4 trillion in five years, or almost double its size today, and your $25,000 would be worth about $48,460. You'd have to wait a long time to see that stake grow into $1 million, if it could happen at all.