So Dan Ives from Wedbush just released his top 10 AI stock picks for year-end, and honestly? The guy might be onto something. While everyone else is freaking out about AI being a bubble (again), Ives is basically saying “hold my coffee” and doubling down.
Here’s the thing: all this recent market drama around AI capex and GPU depreciation has people spooked. But Ives isn’t buying the bubble talk. His argument? We’re not even close to peak AI yet. Think about it – most companies are still figuring out how to use ChatGPT for anything beyond writing emails, autonomous cars are still mostly a fancy cruise control, and robots are still more “lab experiment” than “taking your job.”
Ives puts it perfectly: “We believe this is a 1996 Moment…and NOT a 1999 Bubble Moment.” Translation: we’re at the dial-up internet stage of AI, not the pets.com stage. Big difference.
So what’s on his shopping list? Microsoft takes the crown at #1 – apparently they’re the “best positioned hyperscaler for AI enterprise deployments.” Makes sense when you think about it. Every office worker already lives in Microsoft’s ecosystem, so adding AI is like upgrading from regular coffee to espresso.
Palantir grabs #2, which is wild considering it’s up 117% this year. Ives says “AI use cases start and end with Karp & Co.” That’s some serious confidence in a company that most people still can’t explain what it actually does.
Nvidia rounds out the top 3, because of course it does. Despite all the recent drama, Ives calls it “one chip in the world fueling the AI Revolution.” Hard to argue when they’re basically the arms dealer in the AI gold rush.
The rest of the list reads like a who’s who of tech royalty: AMD (#4), Tesla (#5), Apple (#6), Meta (#7), Alphabet (#8), CrowdStrike (#9), and Palo Alto Networks (#10). Each pick comes with Ives’ signature one-liners, like calling Apple the gateway for the “consumer AI Revolution” and saying Meta is “way oversold on cap-ex concerns.”
What’s interesting is the mix of obvious picks (Microsoft, Nvidia) with some spicier bets (Palantir, Tesla). It’s like he’s saying “yes, buy the boring stuff that definitely works, but also grab some lottery tickets while you’re at it.”
The real question is whether Ives is right about this being 1996 and not 1999. If he’s correct, we’re still in the early innings of something massive. If he’s wrong… well, at least these companies actually make money (mostly).
Either way, it’s refreshing to see someone in finance admit we’re probably not as smart as we think we are about predicting the future. Sometimes the best strategy is just betting on the companies that seem to have their act together and hoping for the best.