# Nvidia's 3,776% run — Paths

> Nvidia stock rose about 3,776% from early 2019 to mid-2024. A late-20s engineer told New York Magazine his unvested shares were worth $1.6 million. He had assumed he would never get lucky in the market.

Canonical: https://paths.significanthobbies.com/luck/nvidia-ai-run/

[Luck directory](https://paths.significanthobbies.com/luck/)

Event luck 2019–2024 Equity

# Nvidia's 3,776% run

An engineer joined a gaming-chip company. Most of his pay later sat in unvested shares.

**3,776%** share-price rise, early 2019 to mid-2024

## What they did

He took a job at Nvidia. Cash salary was just over $200,000; most compensation was equity that vested over four years. He thought of Nvidia as a gaming company.

## What they did not choose

Generative AI made Nvidia's GPUs the bottleneck hardware for the industry. He did not choose the timing of that wave. He told the magazine: 'I could not believe my luck. I still feel that way every quarter.'

## Figures

- Nvidia returned +233.6% in 2023 and +172.8% in 2024 (StatMuse, S&P data).

- Share price rose about 3,776% from early 2019 to September 2024 (Forbes / Tom's Hardware).

- One engineer in his late 20s held $1.6 million in unvested shares, about $800,000 after tax on the next 18 months of vesting (New York Magazine).

## Limit

Accepting the job and keeping the equity were decisions. The 3,776% multiplier was not. The same grant at another company, or at Nvidia in a year the wave did not arrive, is a different outcome.

## Sources

- [StatMuse — Nvidia returns by year](https://www.statmuse.com/money/ask/nvidia-stock-returns-by-year-2017-to-2024)

- [New York Magazine — A newly rich Nvidia engineer](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-its-like-to-be-a-newly-rich-nvidia-engineer.html)

- [Forbes — Nvidia employees become multi-millionaires](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/09/04/nvidia-employees-become-multi-millionaires-but-at-what-price/)

[The layoff that redirected](https://paths.significanthobbies.com/luck/layoff-redirection/)
[Buying a house in 2009](https://paths.significanthobbies.com/luck/2008-housing-crash-buyers/)