Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang attends an event during the annual Computex computer exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan May 30, 2017.

Needham believes Nvidia's leadership in artificial intelligence hardware and software makes it uniquely positioned to usher in the next wave of computing.

Analyst Rajvindra Gill hiked his price target and earnings estimates on the chipmaker Friday, sending shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company up 1.8 percent Friday.

The analyst said Nvidia's new TensorRT Hyperscaler Platform should yield greater market share in artificial intelligence, the tool needed for computers to draw conclusions — or inferences — based on machine learning (ML).

"We see striking parallels between NVIDIA's dominance in artificial intelligence / ML and the 'Wintel' platform during the era of PC computing," Gill wrote. Wintel refers to the pre-eminence of Microsoft's Windows and Intel during the rise of the PC-desktop revolution.

"As these neural networks get bigger in size, the use cases expand exponentially and the demand for maximum throughput and server utilization becomes even more vital," he added.

Gill's new price target of $350, up from $325, represents 29 percent upside over the next 12 months from Thursday's close. He also raised his fiscal 2019 earnings per share forecast to $7.89.

As one of Wall Street most popular trades over the past year, Nvidia shares have rallied more than 9 percent in the last six months and more than 60 percent over the last 12 months.