by Fred Fuld III
Have you ever had a Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda moment?
If you invested $10,000 in Google’s IPO at $85 per share in August 2004:
- Initial investment: $10,000
- IPO price: $85
- Original shares: 117.65 shares
- Google subsequently had a 2-for-1 split in 2014 and a 20-for-1 split in 2022.
- Your original 117.65 shares would therefore have become approximately 4,706 shares.
Your $10,000 would be worth approximately:
$1,638,000
That’s roughly a 164-to-1 increase, or a gain of about $1.63 million, before considering dividends and taxes.
Another way to look at it: Google’s original $85 IPO price is equivalent to only about $2.13 per share today after the two stock splits.
So someone who put $10,000 into Google at the IPO and simply held it would have turned it into well over $1.6 million.
s is a fascinating comparison because all five became extraordinary investments, but Microsoft and Nvidia stand out.
I’ll use $10,000 invested at each company’s IPO, assume the shares were held continuously, account for all stock splits, and value them at the October 7, 2026 closing prices. I am not including dividends or taxes.
| Company | IPO | IPO Price | $10,000 IPO Investment | Value Oct. 7, 2026 | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft (MSFT) | 1986 | $21 | $10,000 | $72.65 million | 7,265× |
| Nvidia (NVDA) | 1999 | $12 | $10,000 | $47.22 million | 4,722× |
| Apple (AAPL) | 1980 | $22 | $10,000 | $34.28 million | 3,428× |
| Amazon (AMZN) | 1997 | $18 | $10,000 | $34.66 million | 3,466× |
| Google (GOOGL) | 2004 | $85 | $10,000 | $1.65 million | 165× |
The October 7 closing prices used were approximately GOOGL $350.50, AMZN $259.92, AAPL $336.67, MSFT $529.76 and NVDA $236.12.
The really interesting part: Nvidia
Nvidia’s $12 IPO price has been reduced by its numerous stock splits to an equivalent of only $0.05 per current share.
So your $10,000 would have bought:
833.33 original Nvidia shares → 200,000 current shares
At $236.12, that’s approximately $47.2 million.
Microsoft is the winner
Microsoft’s IPO was $21. After its numerous stock splits, the original $21 IPO share represents 288 current shares.
Thus, your $10,000 would have purchased about 476.19 original shares, which became approximately 137,143 current shares.
At $529.76, that’s about:
$72.65 million.
And this calculation actually understates the total return, because Microsoft has paid substantial dividends over the years.
One important correction to my earlier Google calculation
I used Google’s Class A (GOOGL) price here. The original 2004 IPO included both Class A and Class B shares, and today’s share-class structure is more complicated. For a clean comparison, I’m treating the IPO investment as an equivalent investment in today’s GOOGL shares and accounting for the 2014 and 2022 splits.
Google’s 2-for-1 split in 2014 and 20-for-1 split in 2022 turned each original IPO share into 40 shares. At $350.50, the $10,000 investment is therefore about $1.65 million.
The surprising takeaway: Google’s IPO was spectacular, but if you had been able to buy Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, or Nvidia at their IPOs, the results would have been dramatically larger.
And there is an even more interesting comparison: if you had put $10,000 into each of all five IPOs—a total of $50,000—you’d have approximately $190 million today. That’s before dividends.
Instead Using the First day of Closing Price
Of course, few investors could have gotten in on the IPO price.
Using the closing price on the first day of public trading, rather than the IPO offering price, gives a more realistic picture of what an investor could have paid if they bought at the end of the first trading day.
I’ve recalculated the figures using the October 7, 2026 closing prices and all subsequent stock splits. The October 7 closing prices were MSFT $529.76, AAPL $336.67, AMZN $259.92, NVDA $237.47, and GOOGL $350.50.
| Company | IPO Date | First-Day Closing Price | $10,000 Invested at First-Day Close | Value Oct. 7, 2026 | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nvidia | 1999 | $19.69 | $10,000 | $57.90 million | 5,790× |
| Microsoft | 1986 | $27.25 | $10,000 | $55.99 million | 5,599× |
| Apple | 1980 | $29.00 | $10,000 | $26.00 million | 2,600× |
| Amazon | 1997 | $23.50 | $10,000 | $5.31 million | 531× |
| Google (Alphabet) | 2004 | $100.34 | $10,000 | $1.40 million | 140× |
The historical first-day closes are well documented: Apple closed at $29 on its December 12, 1980 debut; Amazon closed at $23.50 on May 15, 1997; Nvidia closed at $19 11/16 ($19.6875) on January 22, 1999; and Google closed at $100.34 on August 19, 2004. Microsoft’s first-day close is reported as $27.25.
What stands out
Nvidia becomes the winner when you assume you bought at the first-day closing price. A $10,000 investment would be approximately $57.9 million today.
Microsoft is extremely close behind at $56.0 million.
The difference between Nvidia’s $19.69 first-day close and its $12 IPO price was relatively small compared with the enormous appreciation that followed. Microsoft’s first-day close, however, was about 30% higher than its $21 IPO price, making the difference more noticeable.
Amazon is particularly interesting. Buying at the IPO offering price of $18 versus the first-day close of $23.50 makes a huge difference, but even at $23.50, $10,000 would have grown to approximately $5.31 million.
Google is the least spectacular of these five on this particular basis, but $10,000 still became about $1.4 million.
Now if someone would only invent a time machine.
Disclosure: Author may have positions in some of the above at the time the article was written. No investment recommendations are expressed or implied.