What To Know: Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” BofA Securities analyst Vivek Arya argued that Nvidia is very likely to maintain a massive lead in the AI race over the coming years.

“We do expect Nvidia to maintain its 80%+ market share. The reason is that this is the norm in technology. If you look at any part of technology, right, whether it’s social, e-commerce, operating systems, you will see that the leader keeps 80% of the market … and we think it’s going to be no different in AI,” Arya said.

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Why It Matters: Arya maintained a Buy rating on Nvidia stock on Thursday as he expects shares to continue to be propelled by the generative AI boom. He said we are currently in the second year of what will likely be a three- to five-year deployment cycle.

Many want to draw comparisons to the dot-com boom, but that’s a mistake, he said. That era was fueled by debt, whereas the spending in the AI cycle is being done by some of the biggest companies in the world with incredible balance sheets, he added.

Others want to say Nvidia is overvalued given its remarkable surge over the last couple of years, but it’s still “quite inexpensive” based on some metrics, he said.

“As long as they continue to execute, which we have every confidence they will, we think they should be able to keep over 80% of this market, which in our estimation, could triple over the next few years,” Arya said.

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NVDA Price Action: Nvidia shares were down 1.71% at $133.26 at the time of publication, according to Benzinga Pro.

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