Nvidia will be dominant in AI and the cloud for the next decade, says portfolio manager; 'How can you not own this?'

• Nvidia will be the dominant computing engine that drives AI and the cloud sector for the next decade, said Alger's Ankur Crawford. 
• "How can you not own this at some point?" the portfolio manager said on CNBC.
• She added that the hype over AI isn't overblown as the technology "will disrupt markets that we thought were impenetrable."

Nvidia will be the dominant computing engine that drives artificial intelligence and the cloud sector for the next decade, according to Ankur Crawford, executive vice president and portfolio manager at Alger. 

"How can you not own this at some point?" she said on CNBC Thursday, when Nvidia stock soared after the chipmaker reported strong fourth-quarter earnings and talked up the potential of AI. 

After starting initially with graphics chips used in video games, Nvidia is now involved in making chips for AI applications ranging from autonomous vehicles to robots. 

For "enablers of markets," long-term growth is often exponential and underestimated, and that could be what's happening with Nvidia, Crawford said.

Its total addressable market is so unique and large that "over time, the estimates are just too low," she added.

During his earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company is working hard to capitalize on artificial intelligence as ChatGPT captures the imagination of millions of people around the world, adding that AI has reached an inflection point.

Earlier this year, Nvidia and other artificial intelligence stocks surged as ChatGPT stirred hype around AI.

When asked on Thursday if expectations are overblown, Crawford replied, "No, there is absolutely not too much hype in AI. AI is something that's revolutionizing the way we will work, the way we will compute, the way we will interact with our society."

She pointed out that while ChatGPT has generated excitement on the consumer side, AI technology has been in the works for decades.

And the pace of innovation is no longer linear, but now exponential, Crawford said. "Software is starting to write software. We are no longer limited by a developer writing code. It's going to disrupt markets that we thought were impenetrable."

For example, Google's dominance in the search market was unquestioned just three months ago. But now it's at risk, she said.

Earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled a revamped Bing search engine powered by AI technology from ChatGPT parent OpenAI, which received a $10 billion investment from Microsoft.

"Hats off to the management team at Microsoft that they had the foresight to really take the investment in ChatGPT and propagate it throughout their entire platform," Crawford said.