The Stock That’s Quietly Outperformed NVIDIA 3-to-1 Since 2023

The most magnificent of the Magnificent Seven, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) isn’t just a king; it’s a kingmaker in the financial markets. As a standout designer of processors powerful enough to handle artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, NVIDIA reigns supreme among recognized U.S. businesses in terms of multi-year share-price performance.

That being acknowledged, at least one stock has beaten NVDA on a percentage-gain basis during a specific lookback period. And while some analysts continue to foresee vast returns for NVIDIA stock, another asset may have greater momentum for a follow-through move.

In other words, there’s a growth stock out there that might actually beat NVIDIA. That’s a bold claim, though, so let’s uncover a fast-moving stock and get a reading on its chart, fundamentals, and speed-run potential in the coming quarters.

Three Years of Stellar Returns

It’s incontrovertible that NVDA stock is an out-and-out winner over the past five years. Unless we venture far from the more established realm of mid-to-mega-cap stocks, we’d be hard-pressed to find a rival to NVIDIA’s 1,174% five-year share-price return.

Not everyone wants to look back that far, however. If more recent data is more relevant today, then we can focus in on the past three years and see if there’s a stock worth buying that quietly surpassed the almighty NVIDIA.

Lo and behold, such a stock exists and while it’s fairly well known, it’s certainly not a mega-cap superstar on the level of NVIDIA. The mystery stock in question is AppLovin (NASDAQ:APP), a technology pick that benefited from the AI revolution much like NVIDIA did.

Here’s what we get when we crunch the numbers. NVIDIA stock ran from roughly $15 to $188 in three years for a seemingly unbeatable gain of 1,153%. What could possibly outdo this performance?

While only garnering a fraction of NVIDIA’s headline news coverage, AppLovin managed to pull off the unthinkable. Over the past three years, APP stock’s ascent from $10 to $404 yields a breathtaking return of 3,940%.

Thus, on that specific time horizon, AppLovin returned triple NVIDIA’s gains and then some. AppLovin isn’t the market darling that NVIDIA assuredly is, but there must be something special about AppLovin if its shareholders are sitting on such remarkable profits.

Learning to Love AppLovin

Just to summarize it, AppLovin develops marketing/advertising software platforms. As you might expect, AppLovin is waist-deep in the AI trend, though one could say the same thing about NVIDIA and practically every other technology firm nowadays.

Although APP stock outperformed NVDA stock during the aforementioned time span, you may have noticed that AppLovin stock has pulled back sharply since December. This price action might alarm risk-averse investors, though it shouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker.

After all, lower price points can accompany more favorable values. In the case of AppLovin, the share-price drawdown has brought its trailing 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio to 40.2x; for value seekers, this number may be more appealing than NVIDIA’s P/E ratio of 46.89x.

More importantly, AppLovin appears to be in hyper-growth mode, and not only in terms of share price. In the fourth quarter of 2025, AppLovin managed to improve its revenue by 66% year over year to $1.658 billion and its net income by 84% to $1.102 billion.

This pattern doesn’t appear to be a momentary fluke. For the full year of 2025, AppLovin’s revenue grew 70% to $5.481 billion and the company’s net income ballooned 111% to $3.334 billion.

In case you need more stats, AppLovin’s adjusted EBITDA increased 82% to $1.399 billion in Q4 2025 and grew 87% to $4.512 billion in the full year of 2025 versus 2024. Not to belabor the point, but it’s probably safe to conclude that AppLovin isn’t a zombie company that just lucked out with a three-year stock-price explosion.

Buying Without Assumptions

You’ve likely heard the disclaimer that an asset’s past performance doesn’t guarantee future returns. For sure, this warning applies to APP stock.

Sensible investors won’t assume that AppLovin’s growth in revenue, profits, and/or share price will persist in 2026 and afterwards. They also won’t make any assumptions about NVIDIA, but given the relative sizes of these two tech firms, NVDA stock appears to be a safer bet than APP stock.

Still, AppLovin’s aforementioned financial figures deserve your attention and the company’s stock warrants your consideration. If only as a speculative wager on follow-through extrapolation, a tiny position in AppLovin shares can only harm your portfolio’s value so much and, with due diligence and an abundance of luck, could bulk up your net worth for a while.