Analyst Dan Ives says it will be the summer of $4 trillion market caps for surging tech giants

CNBC

a day ago

Nvidia and Microsoft will be the first to join the exclusive $4 trillion market cap club as the appetite for artificial intelligence skyrockets, according to Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities global head of technology research. The two stocks have had an incredible bounce back this quarter after a rough start to the year, as fears around China export controls and global tariff issues have taken a step back in investors' minds. Continued AI innovation and supersized capital expenditure commitments into AI infrastructure have boosted sentiment propelling tech stocks to new highs. "The poster childs for the AI Revolution are led by Nvidia and Microsoft as both are foundational pieces of building on the biggest tech trend we have seen in our 25 years covering tech stocks on the Street," Ives wrote in a note to clients. "We believe both Nvidia and Microsoft will hit the $4 trillion market cap club this summer and then over the next 18 months the focus will be on the $5 trillion club ... as this tech bull market is still early being led by the AI Revolution." Nvidia last week rallied for five straight days and hit a fresh record, putting its monthly gain at roughly 16% and quarter-to-date gain at about 44.5%. Microsoft saw a consecutive four-day rally last week, bringing its month- and quarter-to-date gains to about 8% and 32.5%, respectively. Nvidia and Microsoft currently have market caps of about $3.83 trillion and $3.69 trillion, respectively. Ives is particularly bullish on Nvidia and its impact on the AI ecosystem. He estimated that for every $1 spent on Nvidia, there is between an $8 to $10 multiplier across the rest of the tech ecosystem, which includes a range of hyperscalers as well as those working on cybersecurity, software, semiconductors, internet, and autonomous and robotics technologies. "There is one company in the world that is the foundation for the AI Revolution and that is Nvidia with the Godfather of AI Jensen having the best perch and vantage point to discuss overall enterprise AI demand and the appetite for Nvidia's AI chips looking forward," Ives said. While Ives considers Nvidia "the only game in town from an AI chip perspective," he highlighted stalwart hyperscalers led by Microsoft, but also now Google and Amazon as Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services find momentum. Advanced Micro Devices is another chip player joining this party, according to Ives. "The impact of the AI cycle on consumer Internet will be massive and it will start with the cloud service divisions, Amazon's AWS and Alphabet's GCP. AWS and GCP acquire AI-capable chips, build AI-capable service offerings, and sell those services into their respective installed bases," he said, noting that Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have identified software-driven AI use cases that are being accelerated across many verticals. "It's all about the use cases exploding which is driving this tech transformation being led by software and chips into the rest of 2025 and beyond and thus speaks to our tech bull and AI Revolution thesis," Ives said.