Jim Cramer: Nvidia's next act will be bigger than gaming or AI

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Nvidia’s (NVDA) next decade could make lawyers — and maybe investors — rethink everything.

“Nvidia is going to make a … chip reasoning platform,” CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer told Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi on the Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast (see the video above; listen below). “The next one is going to be, ‘Let me tell you what I think,’ and it’s going to be maybe superior to how you’re thinking. That’s the big breakout, … the reasoning one.”

Cramer, who was among the earliest to tout Nvidia when it was still dismissed as a gaming chipmaker, said if Nvidia executes, its chips could make judgments with “far fewer mistakes” than humans.

That “chip reasoning” platform could upend industries far beyond tech. He likened it to astronomer Vera Rubin, who pioneered the existence of dark matter. He used law firms as an example, noting that with the system, “you don’t need that fourth-year associate anymore.”

Cramer’s conviction in Nvidia runs so deep that, in 2017, he renamed his dog “Nvidia” to hammer the point home. At the time, Cramer and Sozzi worked together at TheStreet — the business news publication Cramer founded in 1996.

“I couldn’t get people to focus on it,” Cramer said. “By the way, no one wanted to believe because it was too crazy.”

What he saw during a visit to CEO Jensen Huang’s office convinced him that Nvidia was more than just a gaming company. Early demonstrations of artificial intelligence creating art, theater, and even restaurant scenarios were what he describes as “inconceivable.” At the time, Huang urged him to talk up Nvidia.

“I just saw it with my eyes,” Cramer said. “I’m going to tell people they must buy this stock.”

Read more: How does Nvidia make money?

Even today, he tells investors to refrain from asking him about Amazon (AMZN) versus Apple (AAPL) — and to heed his advice from 2017.

“Are you an idiot? Buy Nvidia. NVDA,” he said.

Still, the question for investors now isn’t what Nvidia achieved in the last 10 years, but what comes next. Shares are up more than 1,300% in the past five years.

And Nvidia may also face pressure to strike licensing deals to comply with regulatory rules.

“They [Nvidia] do have to start getting deals with the New York Times,” Cramer warned, pointing to the battle over training data. “That’s why Cloudflare is such a good stock.” Cloudflare (NET) provides web security services.

Cramer’s appearance on Opening Bid Unfiltered coincides with the promotion of his eighth book, “How to Make Money in Any Market.” Like his Nvidia anecdotes, he said the book blends stock-picking stories with investing lessons — though he admits that calling a company like Nvidia early doesn’t happen every cycle.