From $10K to $11.5M: The Amazon IPO Bet That Changed Everything

Amazon went public on May 15, 1997, at just $18 per share. Fast forward 25 years, and here’s the mind-bending part: if you’d thrown $10,000 at it back then and held on through everything, you’d be sitting on $11.5 million today.

Yes, you read that right. That’s a 115,933% gain—roughly 31.7% annual compound growth. To put it in perspective, the S&P 500 only averaged 6.3% annually over the same period. Amazon basically 5x’d the market every single year.

How Did We Get Here?

Amazon didn’t just stay an online bookstore. The company diversified into:

• E-commerce: Still 84% of revenue, hitting 2.6 billion monthly website visits
• AWS (cloud computing): Now dominates the entire industry, with analysts projecting a $1.5 trillion market opportunity by decade’s end
• Advertising: Quietly became a $35.8 billion annual business—outselling YouTube by some measures
• Streaming & emerging bets: Prime Video acquired NFL Thursday Night Football rights; Rivian stake in EV space

The formula? Relentless expansion into wherever there’s growth.

The Catch: Stock Splits Saved Retail Investors

Without four stock splits (2:1 in 1998, 3:1 in 1999, 2:1 in 1999, and 20:1 in 2022), Amazon’s share price would’ve ballooned to impossible levels for regular people to buy. That IPO price of $18? After splits, it’s effectively $0.075 today.

2022 Was Brutal, But Here’s the Thing

Yes, Amazon stock tanked 50% in 2022 as tech sold off hard and inflation pinched consumer wallets. Revenue growth slowed to 8.6%, down from the pandemic boom. But inflation peaked in June 2023, and if you’re thinking long-term, this pullback might just be noise.

The bigger picture: A company with fingers in e-commerce, cloud, AI, advertising, and electric vehicles still has plenty of runways. The question isn’t whether Amazon will recover—it’s whether you can afford to miss it.