Hello friends,
This week, I am pleased to introduce a new feature to *The Consistent Investor™*: **Company Spotlight**. Once each month, we will take a closer look at a publicly traded corporation and examine the business behind the stock symbol. We hear the names of major corporations every day, particularly when markets are rising or falling, but knowing the name of a company is very different from understanding how that company operates.
The purpose of Company Spotlight is financial education. We will explore a company’s history, leadership, products and services, sources of revenue, financial performance, size, competitive position, opportunities, and risks. This is not intended to tell readers whether to buy or sell a particular stock. Instead, my objective is to help investors better understand what they actually own, or may be considering owning, when they purchase shares of a publicly traded corporation.
For our first Company Spotlight, we begin with one of the most closely followed companies in today’s financial markets: **NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA).
Company History
NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company began during a period of rapid growth in personal computing, with an initial focus on computer graphics and the technology required to produce increasingly sophisticated visual experiences.
NVIDIA eventually became widely recognized for developing graphics processing units, commonly known as GPUs. These processors became particularly important to the computer gaming industry because they could efficiently perform the enormous number of calculations required to generate complex graphics. As gaming technology advanced, NVIDIA established itself as one of the leading companies in this specialized market.
The significance of the GPU, however, eventually extended far beyond gaming. Researchers and engineers discovered that a processor capable of performing many calculations simultaneously could also be extremely useful for scientific computing, data analysis, machine learning, and other computationally intensive applications. That discovery would ultimately change the direction of NVIDIA and place technology originally associated primarily with computer graphics at the center of the artificial-intelligence revolution.
Becoming a Public Company
NVIDIA became a publicly traded corporation on January 22, 1999, approximately six years after its founding. Its initial public offering was priced at **$12 per share**, and the company’s stock began trading on the **NASDAQ Stock Market under the ticker symbol NVDA**.
The original $12 share price cannot be compared directly with NVIDIA’s share price today because the company has completed several stock splits during its history. A stock split increases the number of shares an investor owns while proportionally reducing the price assigned to each share. The split itself does not create additional wealth, but it becomes important when examining the long-term performance of an investment because an early shareholder would now own substantially more shares than were originally purchased.
The Value of a Long-Term Investment
One of the most interesting ways to understand NVIDIA’s extraordinary growth is to consider what might have happened to a relatively small investment made when the company entered the public market. An investor placing approximately $1,000 into NVIDIA at its $12 IPO price in 1999, could have purchased roughly 83 shares, depending on the ability to obtain shares at the offering price.
After accounting for NVIDIA’s subsequent stock splits, that original position would represent approximately **40,000 shares today**. At NVIDIA’s August 27, 2026 closing price of **$227.98 per share**, the position would have a value of approximately **$9.1 million**, before considering taxes, transaction costs, dividends, and other factors.
The number is remarkable, but the lesson extends beyond the return itself. An investor attempting to achieve that result would have needed to remain invested for more than 25 years while experiencing the dot-com collapse, recessions, major market corrections, intense competition, technological changes, and periods when NVIDIA’s future was far less certain than it appears when looking backward.
This is an important distinction for long-term investors. Historical success can appear obvious after it has occurred, but investors make decisions without knowing the future. The challenge is not simply identifying a successful company after the fact; it is understanding a business well enough to remain confident in the underlying investment thesis while circumstances around it continue to change.
Understanding NVIDIA’s Size
NVIDIA has grown from a relatively small technology company into one of the world’s largest publicly traded corporations. At the August 27, 2026 closing price of $227.98, NVIDIA had a stock-market value of approximately **$5.5 trillion**.
This figure represents the company’s market capitalization, commonly referred to as its market cap. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying a company’s outstanding shares by its current share price. In simple terms, it represents the value the stock market is assigning to the company’s equity at a particular point in time. NVIDIA’s approximately $5.5 trillion valuation places it among an extremely small group of corporations that have reached this level of market value.
The company’s physical workforce is considerably easier to visualize. NVIDIA employs approximately **42,000 people across 38 countries**, with a substantial majority working in technical roles and research and development. This is significant because NVIDIA’s value is based heavily on engineering, intellectual property, software, product design, and its ability to continue developing increasingly advanced computing technology.
Leadership: Jensen Huang
NVIDIA’s leadership is also unusual for a corporation of its size. Co-founder Jensen Huang has served as President and Chief Executive Officer since NVIDIA was established in 1993. He has therefore guided the company from its beginnings as a technology startup through its public offering and its transformation into one of the world’s most valuable corporations.
Huang also owns a significant amount of NVIDIA stock, which means a large portion of his personal wealth rises and falls with the company’s share price. Following NVIDIA’s August 27, 2026 market rally, Forbes estimated his personal fortune at approximately **$181 billion**. Such estimates can change considerably from day to day because they are heavily influenced by the market value of the shares an individual owns.
Regardless of the daily calculation of his wealth, Huang’s tenure illustrates an important aspect of NVIDIA’s history. The company has maintained continuity in its senior leadership while repeatedly adapting its technology to new markets over more than three decades.
What NVIDIA Actually Sells
When studying any corporation, I believe an investor should be able to answer one fundamental question: **What does this company actually sell, and how does it make money?** A stock symbol represents ownership in a business, and understanding that business should come before attempting to understand movements in its stock price.
NVIDIA designs advanced computing technology. Its products include GPUs for gaming and professional graphics, processors and computing systems for data centers, networking equipment, artificial-intelligence computing platforms, automotive technology, and software. Although gaming remains an important part of the company’s history and business, data-center computing has become the dominant force behind NVIDIA’s recent expansion.
Artificial-intelligence systems require enormous amounts of computing power. Training and operating sophisticated AI models can involve thousands of specialized processors performing calculations simultaneously. NVIDIA supplies much of the hardware, networking technology, and software infrastructure used to perform those tasks.
One simple way to understand NVIDIA’s position is to think about the suppliers behind a major economic expansion. During a gold rush, attention naturally focuses on those searching for gold, but an enormous business can also develop around supplying the equipment required to conduct that search. In the expansion of artificial intelligence, NVIDIA has become one of the world’s most important suppliers of the computing infrastructure required to build and operate these new systems.
The Financial Foundation
A compelling story is not enough to establish a strong business. Eventually, investors must examine what I call the **financial foundation**: revenue, expenses, profits, cash generation, and the financial strength supporting the company’s operations.
For fiscal 2026, NVIDIA reported approximately **$215.9 billion in revenue** and approximately **$120.1 billion in net income**. Net income represents the amount remaining after the company’s expenses and other applicable costs have been accounted for. These results demonstrate that the excitement surrounding NVIDIA and artificial intelligence has been accompanied by substantial growth in the company’s actual business.
The company’s latest results also indicate continued demand for artificial-intelligence infrastructure, and management expects additional revenue growth as businesses and governments continue investing in advanced computing. Investors should remember, however, that forecasts represent expectations rather than guarantees. Even the strongest corporation can experience periods when growth slows, competition increases, or economic conditions change.
Opportunity, Competition, and Risk
NVIDIA’s future opportunity is closely connected to the continued development of artificial intelligence and accelerated computing. AI technology is increasingly being incorporated into cloud computing, robotics, automobiles, scientific research, medicine, manufacturing, and many other areas of the global economy. If investment in these technologies continues to expand, demand for advanced computing infrastructure could remain substantial.
At the same time, NVIDIA operates in one of the world’s most competitive industries. Companies including AMD and Intel compete directly in semiconductor and computing markets, while some of the world’s largest technology companies are developing specialized processors of their own. NVIDIA also relies on outside manufacturers to produce many of its advanced chips, creating supply-chain dependencies that investors should understand. Government regulations and export restrictions can further affect where certain advanced technologies may be sold.
There is also the question created by NVIDIA’s own success. A corporation valued at approximately $5.5 trillion carries significant expectations. Investors are not only evaluating what NVIDIA earns today; they are attempting to determine how much the company may earn many years into the future. If NVIDIA continues expanding rapidly, those expectations may prove justified. If growth slows substantially, however, the market could reassess the value it assigns to the company.
Neither outcome can be known with certainty today. That uncertainty is one of the fundamental characteristics of investing and one of the reasons investors should consider both opportunity and risk.
The ConsistentSam Perspective
What I find most interesting about NVIDIA is not simply the extraordinary increase in its stock price. The more important story is the journey that occurred behind that price.
NVIDIA was founded in 1993 and became a public company in 1999. For many years, consumers primarily associated its technology with computer gaming and graphics. Yet the company continued developing technology whose usefulness eventually expanded far beyond its original market. Decades later, the emergence of artificial intelligence created tremendous demand for precisely the type of accelerated computing NVIDIA had spent years developing.
There is an important investing lesson in that history. When we purchase a share of stock, we are not simply purchasing a ticker symbol that moves across a screen. We are purchasing a small ownership interest in a real corporation. Behind that stock symbol are employees, products, customers, competitors, assets, revenues, expenses, profits, opportunities, and risks.
The idea of approximately $1,000 becoming roughly $9 million is certainly attention-grabbing, but I believe the more valuable question for an investor is different: **Would we have understood NVIDIA’s business well enough to remain an owner for more than 25 years?**
That question captures the purpose of *The Consistent Investor™ Company Spotlight*. We are not searching for yesterday’s winners or attempting to predict tomorrow’s stock prices. We are learning to understand the businesses behind the investments.
That understanding is another part of becoming a more consistent investor.
Thank you for allowing me to be part of your investing journey. I wish you success, growth, and financial confidence in the years ahead.
Samuel F. Lilly
Founder, MoveOn LLC™ Moveonllc.com
Creator of The Consistent Investor™
Consistency. Cash Flow. Growth.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, tax, accounting, or legal advice. MoveOn LLC™, The Consistent Investor™, and Samuel F. Lilly do not guarantee investment results. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Historical performance does not guarantee future results. The hypothetical NVIDIA investment example does not account for taxes, commissions, timing differences, dividends, or other costs. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making financial decisions.