NVIDIA stock price history is defined by extreme cycles: the stock has lost more than 80% of its value once and still returned over 1,000% in five years (source: Trefis). Both halves of that sentence are the story. A stock capable of multi-hundred-percent rallies is the same stock that took roughly eight years to recover its 2007 high.
For active traders and investors holding tokenized NVDA on BloFin, that history is the most useful thing available for calibrating position size, leverage, and expectations, because it says something durable about how the asset behaves that no current price does. What follows tracks NVIDIA’s major market cycles, stock splits, the shift from GPUs to AI infrastructure, its performance against the S&P 500, and how traders use that context on BloFin to manage volatility and risk.
Quick snapshot of NVIDIA's recent stock performance
NVIDIA reached an all-time high of $236.54 on May 14, 2026, and has traded in a 52-week range of roughly $164 to $237. Market capitalization sits above $5 trillion, making it the first company to reach that level, with an enterprise value of $4.98 trillion and trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 32.88 (as of August 25, 2026).
Returns tell the story of the last cycle plainly. NVDA has gained roughly 24% over the past year, more than 400% over three years, and more than 1,000% over five, against an S&P 500 that returned a small fraction of that over the same windows. The gap reflects NVIDIA's position in AI and data center compute rather than anything about the broader market.
Prices and multiples move continuously, so treat the figures above as the shape of the range rather than a quote. The NVDA stock page covers what the company earns and how.
From IPO to the pre-AI era of computer graphics processors, 1999 to 2015
NVIDIA Corporation went public on January 22, 1999, on the NASDAQ at roughly $12 per share. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company built its early business around helping design and manufacture computer graphics processors, related multimedia software, and chipsets for PC gaming. The stock's first decade featured two distinct boom-bust cycles.
IPO and dot-com era (1999-2002): NVDA rose with the broader tech bubble, then fell sharply as semiconductor demand collapsed in 2001-2002. The company survived by doubling down on its GeForce line and discrete GPU market share.
The mid-2000s climb and the 2008 crash. GeForce gained real traction in gaming, and NVIDIA ran several splits to keep the share price accessible. Then the financial crisis took the stock down 84% peak to trough, its deepest drawdown on record, and reclaiming that 2007 peak took 99 months (source: Trefis).
2010-2015 consolidation: Returns were modest and the stock traded in a narrow split-adjusted range. CUDA was already letting NVIDIA GPUs handle work beyond traditional graphics, with the Graphics Processing Unit becoming useful for parallel computing and early AI research during this period, but none of that was in the share price yet.
In this era, the company operates through what would later be formalized as its following segments: a graphics segment covering gaming and enterprise workstation graphics, and early compute and networking efforts that were not yet material to valuation. Professional visualization and automotive platforms contributed revenue but remained small.
The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) breakout, 2016 to 2019
From about 2016 onward, NVDA entered a sustained re-rating. The stock moved from roughly $30-$40 in 2015 to above $150 (pre-later splits) by late 2018. NVIDIA's historical stock fluctuations are sensitive to GPU demand shifts, and this period demonstrated both sides of that sensitivity.
2016-2017 surge: Gaming demand, professional visualization growth, and the first real evidence that GPUs would power neural network training in hyperscale data centers. Revenue growth outpaced traditional hardware companies.
Late-2018 correction: Crypto-mining demand for GPUs collapsed. NVDA's stock experienced sharp pullbacks during this macroeconomic correction, falling roughly 30-50% from its October 2018 highs by year end. NVIDIA faced regulatory uncertainties from US export controls on AI chips, adding further pressure.
2019 partial recovery: Data center and cloud spending resumed, and the stock began trending upward again as AI use cases expanded.
For BloFin users analyzing NVDAX, this era's chart shows how quickly sentiment can re-rate a high-growth hardware name in both directions.
Pandemic, data center, AI takeoff, and the current cycle, 2020 to 2026
This stretch of NVIDIA stock price history contains the largest gains and some of the steepest corrections in the company's life as a publicly traded stock.
NVDA sold off with the broader market in March 2020, then rebounded as work-from-home, gaming, and cloud computing strengthened GPU demand. Through 2020 and 2021, the stock more than doubled multiple times. NVIDIA executed a 4:1 split in July 2021 and a 10:1 split in June 2024, bringing the cumulative split factor to roughly 480x since IPO. For a more detailed breakdown, you can read the NVIDIA stock split article.
NVIDIA's stock had a notable 50% decline during the 2022 tech sector correction, driven by interest rate hikes and inventory adjustments in gaming and PC markets. But the AI inflection around 2023-2024 reversed those losses and then some. NVIDIA reported data center revenue growth exceeding 427% year over year in one quarter during the AI boom. NVIDIA's GPUs became the gold standard for training large language models, and NVIDIA's rapid revenue growth outpaced traditional hardware companies by a wide margin. NVIDIA transformed from a gaming GPU company to a major AI infrastructure supplier.
The most recent reported quarter, ended April 26, 2026, produced revenue of $81.6 billion and GAAP net income of $58.3 billion, the latter up 211% from a year earlier (source: NVIDIA Q1 fiscal 2027 results). Fiscal 2026, which closed in January 2026, delivered $215.9 billion of revenue, up 65%.
None of which has made the stock smooth. Periods through 2025 and 2026 have seen consolidation and pullbacks, and double-digit percentage declines over four-week spans have occurred inside the secular uptrend rather than instead of it. The AI washout covers one such stretch.
What the cycles actually tell you
Long multi-year uptrends punctuated by 50% to 85% drawdowns describe a growth story and a volatile asset at the same time. Both descriptions are accurate, and which one matters depends entirely on your holding period.
The pattern across every cycle above is that the declines came from demand shocks and rate moves rather than from the technology failing. The 2008 fall was macro, 2018 was crypto demand evaporating, and 2022 was rates and inventory. That is worth knowing because it suggests what to watch, but it is a description of what has happened rather than a rule about what will.
Trading activity concentrates around earnings and macro events, where investors often watch analyst signals such as a buy recommendation and dates like August 26, 2026 for the next earnings window. If you hold the perpetual rather than spot through those windows, a historical 50% decline is a very different event at leverage, and leverage and liquidation covers what that means arithmetically.
How traders use NVIDIA's price history and cycles on BloFin
BloFin lists NVDAX/USDT on the spot market and NVDAUSDT as a perpetual contract. Both track NVDA's economic value, so the volatility described above reaches them directly, with one addition: the token trades continuously while NASDAQ does not, so news breaking after the closing bell is absorbed by NVDAX before the stock can reopen.
That comparison between wrappers is set out in tokenized NVDA versus real NVDA stock, and the gapping mechanism in why tokenized NVDA gaps when NASDAQ is closed.
The broader trade-offs of holding a stock in tokenized form are weighed in tokenized stocks, pros and cons.
Order depth is the practical constraint when volatility arrives, and liquidity and slippage on NVDAX covers reading the book before sizing. Past price performance does not guarantee future results, and historical cycles are context for a decision rather than a substitute for one; some traders also use the stock page to view live tokenized pricing relative to the underlying share when comparing wrappers, using a recent June checkpoint and then watching how pricing shifts into July, and BloFin users may keep a separate list of event-driven names they monitor for execution and sizing.
Frequently asked questions
How has NVIDIA performed against the S&P 500?
Substantially better over every recent window, though the gap widens the further back you look. Over the past year NVDA has returned roughly 24% against a high single-digit to low double-digit return for the index. Over three years the difference is more than 400% against a fraction of that, and over five years NVDA has topped 1,000%. Those comparisons flatter NVDA because the period coincides almost exactly with the AI infrastructure buildout, so they describe one cycle rather than a permanent relationship.
What major crashes has NVDA experienced?
Three stand out. The largest was roughly 85% during the 2008 financial crisis, against about 57% for the S&P 500, and recovering the prior high took around eight years. The 2018 collapse in crypto-mining demand for GPUs took 30% to 50% off the October high within a few months. The 2022 technology correction produced a 50% decline driven by interest rate increases and inventory adjustment. Each was a demand or macro shock rather than a failure of the underlying technology.
Why do the five-year returns look so extreme?
Because the period from 2021 to 2026 coincided with an enormous ramp in AI infrastructure spending. Hyperscalers and AI labs increased GPU orders faster than supply could grow, driving data center revenue growth that exceeded 427% year over year in one quarter. High margins on compute and networking products meant that revenue growth translated efficiently into earnings, and the multiple expanded at the same time, which compounds the effect on the share price.
How many stock splits has NVIDIA done?
Six since the IPO. Two-for-one splits in 2000, 2001 and 2006, a three-for-two in 2007, a four-for-one in July 2021 and a ten-for-one in June 2024. Multiplied together that is a cumulative factor of roughly 480 times, which is why historical prices look so small next to current ones. Any chart or price comparison reaching back before June 2024 needs to be split-adjusted or the numbers will not be comparable.
Does price history help predict where NVDA goes next?
Not in the sense of forecasting a direction. What it does provide is a realistic sense of range, and for many NVDA traders that matters more than dividends or dividend yield because returns have been driven mainly by capital appreciation and volatility. History is most useful for setting expectations about volatility and drawdown depth, which is a risk management input rather than a directional signal, and it should be combined with your own research on current conditions.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include NVIDIA's first-quarter fiscal 2027 results and NVIDIA's fiscal 2026 annual results, current as of August 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. Both traditional stocks and tokenized assets such as NVDAX are volatile. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.