The Next AI Wave Isn't About Models—It's About Infrastructure, Says Wedbush Analyst

Anthropic’s eye-popping $965 billion valuation, fueled by a fresh $65 billion funding round, has grabbed headlines. But according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, the real story is just beginning—and it’s not about the chatbots themselves. Ives told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe that investors should shift focus to the data layer powering AI deployments: companies like Snowflake, Datadog, and InnoData. “The second, third, and fourth derivative of spending is where the puck is going,” he said, pointing to recent moves by enterprise infrastructure firms as proof. Ives sees Anthropic’s growth as the opening act, not the finale, for a broader AI rally that will lift the Nasdaq to 30,000 by 2027. He’s betting on a wave of mega-IPOs—SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic—calling them “the three pillars of the fourth industrial revolution.” That optimism isn’t universal. Zacks’ John Blank warns the rush to go public looks like a market top, echoing the dot-com frenzy of 1999. Ives counters that this feels more like 1997: early innings, not a bubble burst. For business leaders, his message is clear: the AI boom’s next phase won’t be won by model makers alone, but by the companies that build the pipes, storage, and observability tools that make machine learning work at scale.