Will Nvidia’s stock follow the path of Apple or Cisco as the AI era for tech begins?

Nvidia Corp.’s sales of hardware needed for artificial intelligence have taken off and sent the chip maker’s stock into the stratosphere, early proof that a new era has arrived for tech.

Now investors are wondering where the chip maker — and the larger tech sector — heads from here, after Nvidia NVDA earlier this year became just the seventh publicly traded U.S. company to top a $1 trillion market capitalization. A look back at the companies that defined the prior two tech cycles — the dot-com boom and bust and the smartphone…