What $100 Put Into Big Tech Five Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

Fifteen well-known technology stocks, one purchase date, one accounting day: $100 into each in May 2018, valued five years later in May 2023. Tesla's $100 came out at $862.75. Intel's came out at $65.73. Same industry, same five years. Everything else landed somewhere between those two, and the table shows where.

The Five-Year Results, Ranked by Value

Each row shows what a $100 investment made in May 2018 would have been worth five years later, plus the annual rate of return where it was reported.

Tesla Produced the Largest Gain, and the Biggest Drop From Its Peak

Tesla's 53.62% annual rate of return is the highest on the list, and it's what carried $100 to $862.75. The ride wasn't smooth. The shares hit a five-year peak around $380 in November 2021 and were trading around $170 at the time these figures were calculated. An investor who checked the account in late 2021 saw a much bigger number than the one who checked in May 2023.

AMD Finished Second, Nvidia Third

Advanced Micro Devices makes semiconductors for computers, and it was the other outsized winner here: $842.73 from a $100 stake. Like Tesla, it was off its five-year high, which came in around $158 in November 2021.

Nvidia's $482.71 came from an annual return of 36.84%. The company also ran a 4-for-1 stock split in July 2021, so anyone holding before that date ended up with four times the share count.

Intel Is the Only Name on the List That Lost Money

Every other stock here finished above the original $100. Intel finished at $65.73. The stock closed at $54.98 on May 10, 2018, and was hovering around $30 a share five years later. Revenue trouble over that stretch is the reason usually given for the pressure on the price.

Apple's 2020 Split Didn't Change What the Position Was Worth

Apple turned $100 into $392.10, a gain of $292.10. It also split 4-for-1 in 2020. A split adds nothing to a position; it slices the same holding into more, cheaper pieces, which can make it easier to sell part of a stake or reinvest small amounts later.

Microsoft Reached $341.94, With AI Spending in the Background

$100 in Microsoft grew to $341.94. The company has been putting money into artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT and other AI-related businesses. By 2023, that spending was the part of the story investors were watching, rather than anything in the historical return.

Qualcomm and Oracle Ended Within a Few Dollars of Each Other

Qualcomm landed at $230.91 on an 18.14% annual return, even though the shares were trading near their 52-week lows at the time, around $106 against a low of $101.93. Oracle landed at $228.35 on a 17.88% annual return, or $128.35 in gains on the original $100. Two nearly identical five-year outcomes from very different businesses.

Alphabet Returned 15.29% a Year and Split 20-For-1

Google's parent company brought $100 to $204.28. A 20-for-1 split in July 2022 multiplied the share count for anyone who owned it beforehand, without changing what the position was worth on the day of the split.

Salesforce Added $63.72 on 10.32% Annual Returns

The customer-software company finished at $163.72. Its 10.32% annual return put it in the middle of this group, well short of the semiconductor names and comfortably ahead of the slowest performers.

Amazon and Meta Both Peaked Mid-Window

Amazon's $100 became $134.88, a profit of $34.88. Heavy e-commerce demand during the COVID-19 pandemic took the stock to its five-year high, and it spent the following year giving that ground back. Amazon also ran a 20-for-1 split in June 2022, so the share count grew even though the value didn't move much.

Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and other products, finished at $132.14. It touched a 52-week high around $244 per share in May 2023, still below its five-year peak from August 2021.

Cisco, IBM, and Netflix Barely Cleared the Starting Line

These three all finished ahead of $100, but only just.

• Cisco reached $119.31. The shares traded in a fairly narrow band of roughly $35 to $65 for five years, producing a 3.58% annual return. Cisco has also announced plans to begin manufacturing in India.
• IBM reached $113.81, an annual return of 2.61%.
• Netflix reached $103.76. Subscriber growth had slowed in the company's most recent quarter, and management was pushing back against shared passwords.

Where You Start and Stop Measuring Changes the Answer

A five-year snapshot is one pair of dates, and moving either end reshuffles the whole table. Amazon is the clearest case: an investor who bought in 2018 and looked at the position during the pandemic e-commerce boom saw a very different figure than the $134.88 recorded in May 2023. Same shares, same purchase price, different measuring day. Tesla and AMD show the same pattern from the other direction, both sitting well below highs set in November 2021 while still ranking first and second here.

There's a hindsight problem here too. A list like this gets assembled by looking backward at names that are famous now. In May 2018, nobody knew which two of these 15 would multiply eightfold or which one would finish underwater, and the returns above say nothing about what any of them does next.

Sector, Size, and Splits: How to Read the Spread

Fifteen large, familiar technology companies, one five-year window, and results running from $65.73 to $862.75. Sector membership didn't decide the outcome, and neither did company size or name recognition. Any one of these stocks could have lost value over the period, and one of them did. Split history is worth understanding before comparing an old share price to a current one, since Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Nvidia all divided their shares during this stretch.