Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities’ Global Head of Technology Research and founder of Yorkville Labs, keeps hammering the same message: the AI cycle has barely started. On The Pomp Podcast, he argued “Those that say it’s seventh, eighth, you haven’t. It’s Vegas 1955. You’re just building the Strip.” His placement of the revolution in the “third inning” is a deliberate call to look past capex debates and Chinese model narratives and follow, in his words, “the breadcrumbs” of demand signals across chips, memory, hyperscalers, and enterprise software.
Ives said monetization proof points should start surfacing in the second half of the year, and he told listeners he is “much more confident that this is truly the fourth industrial revolution today than maybe a year and a half ago.” Here is how that thesis maps to five stocks investors can actually own.
NVIDIA: The AI Factory Buildout
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) remains the purest expression of Ives’ thesis. Q1 FY27 revenue hit $81.61B, up 85.2% year over year, with data center revenue of $75.25B and networking up 199%. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $1.87, and management guided Q2 to $91.0B, per the company’s SEC filing. Jensen Huang described “the buildout of AI factories, the largest infrastructure expansion in human history” as accelerating.
Shares trade at $196.75, up 5.49% YTD and 911.03% over five years. Polymarket assigns only a 39% probability of a July close above $200, so the crowd is treating this as consolidation, not blowoff.
Microsoft: The Monetization Test Case
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) delivered Q3 FY26 revenue of $82.89B with Azure up 40%. Satya Nadella said “Our AI business surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% year-over-year.” Commercial RPO reached $627B, and capex ran $30.88B. Details are in the Q3 earnings release.
The catch: shares sit at $399.94, down 19.19% YTD. That gap between +123% AI growth and a negative stock is precisely the capex-versus-free-cash-flow debate Ives says investors should ignore.
Taiwan Semiconductor: The Picks and Shovels
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) posted Q2 2026 revenue of $40.2B, up 36.0%, with EPS beating expectations. Nodes at 7nm and below made up 77% of wafer revenue, and 2nm just entered ramp. Full-year 2026 revenue growth is guided slightly above 40% in USD. Shares are up 31.99% YTD and 64.25% over one year, validating Ives’ claim that demand signals from chip and memory players are the real breadcrumbs.
Johnson Controls: The Data Center Cooling Play
Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) is Ives-style AI adjacency. Q2 FY26 revenue was $6.14B, and CEO Joakim Weidemanis reported “Orders grew 30% and backlog reached a record $20 billion, reflecting strength in data centers and other high-growth, technology-driven operating environments where we differentiate.” Full-year adjusted EPS guidance was raised to ~$4.85. Shares trade at $138.97, up 20.43% YTD, with analyst target $156.37.
NXP Semiconductors: Physical and Edge AI
NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ:NXPI) fits the enterprise-and-industrial edge of Ives’ thesis. Q1 2026 revenue reached $3.18B, Industrial and IoT grew 24%, and Q2 guidance implies +18% YoY. CEO Rafael Sotomayor cited “growing customer adoption of our differentiated portfolio, particularly in industrial and automotive processing that supports software-defined vehicles and physical AI.” Shares sit at $263.50, up 24.38% YTD, with a forward P/E of 18x.
What to Watch
Ives told listeners “It’s very easy to get scared into certain narratives or what Nvidia does 8 hours after they report a quarter.” The data supports that framing: NVIDIA has beaten 5 quarters in a row yet averaged a -1.58% day-of reaction. The next monetization checkpoints, hyperscaler capex signals, enterprise AI revenue disclosures, and 2nm ramp updates from TSMC, will determine whether the third-inning call ages well or looks premature.
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