Dan Ives is calling the turn. With geopolitical tensions easing after Iran ceasefire developments, the Wedbush analyst sees a risk-on shift underway-and argues that tech stocks, especially Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) and ServiceNow, Inc (NYSE: NOW), are mispriced right as AI demand accelerates.
AI Demand Is Hitting Now, Not Later
After weeks of industry checks, Ives says the message from CIOs is clear: AI adoption is moving fast from experimentation to deployment. Enterprises are actively identifying use cases, with 2026 shaping up as a major rollout year.
That shift is critical. The market has been pricing software like growth is slowing-but Ives sees the opposite. AI is becoming a top IT priority, with spending set to scale into the trillions across software, semis, and infrastructure.
In that context, recent sell-offs in enterprise software look disconnected from the underlying demand curve.
Cybersecurity Becomes The AI Gatekeeper
AI isn't just creating opportunity-it's creating risk.
Ives highlights that AI-driven threats are becoming faster, cheaper, and more sophisticated, expanding attack surfaces across cloud, identity, and autonomous systems. That dynamic turns cybersecurity into a core layer of the AI stack, not a side function.
Names like CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD), Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: PANW), Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZS), Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP) and Rubrik, Inc (NYSE: RBRK) stand to benefit as enterprises invest in securing AI-driven workflows.
The Real Setup
The market has spent months focused on macro risks and AI competition fears. Ives is focused on execution and demand-and sees both improving.
His view: the software sell-off is overdone, concerns around AI replacing enterprise vendors are overstretched, and the bottom in tech may already be behind us.
If the risk-on shift holds, this isn't just a bounce. It's a setup where AI demand begins to reprice the sector-and the laggards may not stay laggards for long.