Dan Ives: Five Tech Wagers Into 2027 Plus Cheap Memory Bets

The warmest topic in this Global Money Talk studio session in Seoul was the new investment bank Ives set up with Yorkville after eight years at Wedbush. The firm, called Yorkville Ives, focuses on technology, energy and infrastructure and reached a team of about 25 within a short time of its July launch. His thesis is blunt: the AI wave has started an investment cycle so large that it needs a bank of its own. The formation notice carried via PRNewswire confirms the structure brings research, banking, trading and principal investing under one roof. Strong investor interest from day one shows how hungry the market is for this theme.

Ives reads the recent wobble in Korean stocks as an overstretched correction. SK and Samsung sit at the center of KOSPI volatility, and foreign selling has pressed the index at a moment when even New York taxi drivers talk about KOSPI. The US picture looks different: the S&P and Nasdaq keep setting records. In his view the gap comes down to trust that AI revenue is reaching income statements in America. Each negative headline, whether funding for a large lab or regulatory pressure rumors, sends a wave of worry through markets; he treats that noise as entry points rather than reasons to leave the investment game.

The engine of the US rally is what Ives calls second, third and fourth derivatives. The story starts with the NVDA component; by his math every $1 heading to NVDA creates $8-$10 of extra revenue across the rest of technology. About a thousand data centers are expected to be built in the US over the next 12-18 months. Targets carried by CNBC point to $300 for NVDA and $615 for MSFT, with Microsoft backed by $678B of contracted backlog. As corporate earnings accelerate, investors grow convinced this is a genuine transformation rather than a valuation bubble.

Record indexes alongside elevated rates and oil do not surprise him. With 10-year yields and crude where they stand, pressure on stocks would be normal, yet markets rise because the underlying structure is healthy: AI funding has opened a giant investment supercycle. The cycle is not confined to technology; energy and infrastructure stocks feed on the same wave. He reads high rates as a sign of strength rather than a problem: money flows toward areas that produce returns.

What hardened his conviction is use cases reaching the field. Software names such as Palantir and Snowflake, alongside the spending plans of hyperscalers, prove demand is holding. His Asia supply-chain checks put NVDA demand at roughly 13 times supply, and the framework carried by Morningstar sees the infrastructure layer supply-constrained at least into 2027. Nobody in the investment race can brake, because whoever pauses loses share. He argues less than 15% of the investment wave is behind us; the game is in the third inning.

Into 2027 he frames the top five stocks as five pillars: NVDA with the single component feeding the revolution, MSFT ahead with Azure while $25B-$30B of extra revenue stays unpriced, PLTR at the center of enterprise rollout, Apple as the toll collector on the consumer side with 20% of the world reaching AI through an Apple device, and CRWD. On security, the expectation carried by Barchart stands out: as autonomous software widens the attack surface, security budgets are seen doubling within two to three years. The $335 target for CRWD is a wager on the name collecting that tax.

The latest update to the Ives AI 30 list shows where money is heading: Dell and SPCX enter while Oracle and Pega leave. Benzinga reports the shift landed ahead of a rebalance of the IVES exchange-traded fund portfolio. The Dell picture is simple: a huge installed base converting into revenue through AI infrastructure spending. SpaceX, in his view, is the next hyperscaler candidate, building brick by brick on data and cloud. The Oracle side runs opposite: rising debt loads and cuts into core muscle put the firm through a transition phase.

Telecom is the roughest chapter. The purchase of 14 MHz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band puts Starlink Mobile on course to become a genuine US carrier. The figure carried by Fierce Network puts the price near $8B in cash. Shares of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile fell hard on the news, and Ives expects the industry to stay under pressure. He sees no full rebound soon: the pace at which Musk creates resources plus terrestrial buildout plans make breathing room scarce for carriers. His standing rule applies here too: never count Musk out.

On Apple he remains among the boldest names on the street with a $400 target. October production-cut rumors shook the stock, yet his answer comes with a smile: had he received $1 for every iPhone cut story from the supply chain, he would be far richer today. His own checks point the other way. The math carried by the Fool points to AI revenue adding $75-$100 to Apple shares. On leadership he calls filling the prior chief role nearly impossible, and argues the legacy of product-first Ternus will be written by success in turning AI into revenue.

He sees Duo pulling in about 10% of Pro Max buyers, calling it the first major hardware renewal since AirPods. The real game is installed base: with hundreds of millions of devices in hands, the issue is revenue, not invention. Being late does not finish Apple; his example is Meta, whose Lama version flopped while a 3.5B-user base carried a comeback and the stock recovered. The formula repeats at Apple: meet AI revenue with installed base. The math carried by Yahoo backs it: roughly 375M iPhones untouched for over four years, plus 10M Duo sales expected over coming periods.

Meta ranks among his core picks. His thesis is convergence: large systems commoditize over time and distribution wins. A slowdown signal from the rival lab added, in his view, 20% to Meta shares, and he reads regulatory pressure as an attempt to pull the ladder up. He takes download swings for the chat app in stride; his analogy is vivid: users settled on one system struggle to switch, much like moving between Android and Apple, so late arrivals that stick can still win. That is why he finds the early momentum on the Muse side impressive.

The cheapest rows sit in memory. Ives argues memory stocks trade as if they belonged to a cyclical industry, while demand cannot meet supply into 2029 in an almost anti-cyclical setup. MU stuck at a single-digit earnings multiple counts, in his view, as proof of this valuation error. The picture carried by Fortune supports it: high-bandwidth memory is the bottleneck of AI servers and the three large producers have sold out 2026 output. Tesla carries a similar transition discount: weak numbers while the firm shifts from EV maker to AI and robotics player, yet he sees doubling potential in 2-3 years with the Optimus and Cybertruck ramp as the engine of this investment thesis. The $500 Tesla target carried by Morningstar fits the same frame.

Opportunity on the private side sits in names public investors normally cannot reach. The IVES vehicle he chairs promises access to private AI firms through a listed product, which he frames as democratizing the trade. Names on his radar include defense and robotics firms such as Anduril and Figure alongside large system builders including ByteDance. His Korea stance is unchanged: SK stands among the bedrock names of the AI 30, with the New York listing and expansion plans pointing to upward revisions; Samsung brings mobile and consumer strength while Hyundai offers under-the-radar technology. Chinese producers trail by years, and each fear wave, as in the DeepSeek case, looks overstated. The Seoul press briefing carried by Yahoo, with its 9,000 KOSPI target for the next 6-12 months, puts that confidence into numbers. His closing line says it all: tune out the noise and watch the cash flow behind the stock.