원문 보기
Two best physical AI plays in the market are Tesla and Nvidia. Musk is essentially building the biggest AI company in the world. Dan Ives says buy Palantir, Tesla and Nvidia. But is he still right? This man called Palantir at 16. He called Nvidia before it blasted off and before everyone else caught on.
Even Tesla after most thought Elon was finished. There's a reason why Dan Ives is one of the most trusted voices on Wall Street when it comes to tech. On wallstreetzen.com we track over 5,000 Wall Street analysts and Dan Ives ranks in the top 1% at number 43 overall. So this isn't noise. This is a guy who has the receipts.
I just watched a 2-hour video with Dan and he made some bold predictions worth hearing about. He's one of the biggest bulls on the street. So when he names the one threat that could derail the entire AI revolution, well, it's worth paying attention to. Now, don't get me wrong. All not of his predictions were doom and gloom.
Most were pretty damn positive, but it all made me curious. So I actually went ahead and ran and his biggest through the data to see if he is right. Some of them the data completely backs up, but a couple of them, well, I'm not so sure about. So we're going to break it all down together today. By the way, I'm Steve Reissmeister.
I spent more than a decade as editor-in-chief of zacks.com and I'm currently a partner at Wall Street Zen. Where our quant team analyzes thousands of data points to find investment opportunities exactly like these. Now before we dive in, if you're interested in reaction videos like this, then uh hit that like button.
It tells me to make more of them in the future. My whole career, whether it was betting on Apple on the iPhone or betting on Musk going back or Jensen, you have to make a bet on who's leading it and the technology. It was a technology and a car bet. As well as understanding like Palantirians, the culture.
See that See that was the thing where I I really started to understand the culture of Palantir. That's where I'm like, well, I just feel like I could be wrong in a quarter or two. I could be wrong in the next year. Longer term, I'll meet this bet. And that was sort of I also recognized they needed an institutional voice.
Let's start with the big one, Palantir. Ives initiated coverage back in the middle of 2023 when the stock was trading for only 16. And back then almost no institutional analysts would even touch the stock. Now, Ives saw that retail investors were ahead of the institutional investors on this one and he stepped in and that paid off in a big way.
The interesting question is whether Palantir is still a buy now even with the market cap north of 300 billion and when it's trading for over 100 times forward earning. Now, Ives says, yes. Not a real shocker, but let's examine his bullish thesis. The way I view it is over the next three to five years, the valuation will be free cash flow.
Very similar to my thesis on Apple over the last decade. You have to look at the services business and almost view it as a sum of the parts. I would equate that Palantir with AIP and is multiple billions. Is it three, four, five? I just think like if you focused on valuation over year or two, you've missed every transformational growth stock the last 20 years.
So here's how I think about it. The underlying business is undeniably strong. The most recent quarter had a 39% revenue growth year-over-year. US commercial revenue surged 71% and they closed 139 deals worth over $1 million each. Now, the rule of 40 score, which is essential for evaluating any kind of software business, is all the way up to 83.
Palantir is more than doubling this vital benchmark based upon impressive revenue growth and its profit margin. And look, I'll put my cards on the table. I actually bought Palantir in my personal account when it dropped nearly 40% from the all-time high. I think it has all the earmarks of something like Nvidia, the kind of stock that earns its premium valuation over time.
But I'm not blind to the risk. When you're paying this kind of high multiple, the margin for error is paper thin. When I pull up Palantir on the Zen ratings, the overall grade is a C. That's only a modest hold rating. But when you look at the component grades, it starts to make a lot more sense. We have Bs for key areas like financials, sentiment and growth.
This shows that the business itself is firing on all cylinders. But value, well, that's only a D and momentum is a D and safety is a C. This says that the price has gotten a little ahead of the fundamentals, which likely explains why price action has been downright brutal since the start of 2026 when many investors were taking money off the table with their favorite AI stocks.
Now, that's the Zen ratings telling you exactly what Ives is telling. Just in a different language. It's an elite business trading at a price that leaves very little room for error. Whether that price is justified depends entirely on whether Ives is right about the 2030 free cash flow number. If he is, today's valuation looks cheap in hindsight.
But if he's wrong, it's going to be a painful on the way down. Now, let me know in the comments, do you agree with Ives that Palantir is still worth holding at this valuation or are you waiting for a bigger pullback and at what price would you load up on shares? So please put that in the comments. Now, now let's talk about the case for Tesla and Nvidia.
Ives was asked point-blank, what are the two biggest physical AI plays in the market? No hesitation here when he answered. Two best physical AI plays in the market are Tesla and Nvidia. It's not even Like I don't I don't think there's a question. Tesla is the most controversial of the two picks. Let's see what else Dan had to say.
It's about autonomous robotics. It's about them owning more of XAI. Eventually, what I believe they own pieces of SpaceX. Musk is essentially building the biggest AI company in the world. 10 million vehicles on the road. It's about data. It's about driving autonomous. It's about If you have an 8-year-old today, they're not going to need your driver's license when they're 16.
The core argument is simple enough. You can't value Tesla like a car company or even a tech company. You need to value it like an AI infrastructure play. Ives is all in on the data, the autonomous driving and robotics being the greatest assets inside Tesla. Now, let's look at Tesla through the lens of the Zen ratings where it only ranks in the bottom 40% for fundamentals.
That gives it a C or hold rating. When it comes to growth, it's around the 65th percentile, but if 35% of companies are higher for growth uh than Tesla, well, I'm sure there's not enough juice to squeeze at its present valuation. This is something Dan disagrees with. Jobs launches iPhone. Our whole view is like, it's going to change the world.
Year later, financial crisis. People like, did it have that work? Just only with AT&T iPhone launch? Why would anyone ever leave their Blackberries? Financial crisis, no one's going to bet. Like if you just went with that thesis, look what happened. It's the same thing with Tesla. If you get caught up in like, oh, robotaxi, there was a delay here and oh, Cybertruck productions moved out.
You missed the bigger story. I think the key difference here is that Palantir delivered and beat expectations in a very real way. Whereas Tesla is doing the opposite. It constant delays and overpromising and underdelivering. It's a sign of deeper issues and it's just a touch too risky for my taste. Now, let's turn to what he had to say about Nvidia.
But before I do, a quick request that if you're liking this commentary so far, hit that subscribe button. That's because I record market commentary and stock pick videos frequently and that's the best way to ensure that you don't miss any of them in the future. Okay, on to the next clip. Will AMD, will Huawei and China, will other players, big tech companies do their own chips?
Will they seed some market share over time? Yeah. But right now, they're four years ahead of anyone else. That's why their third-rate chip H200 in China they'd line up for. In terms of Alibaba, everyone else. All that is right on the money. No argument for me. Dan also laid out some bullish facts on the uh demand side of the equation.
Demand to supplies 12 to 1 for Nvidia chips. When you look what's happened with memory and you think this is a bubble? That's I don't know. It's like to me like that but that's what makes the market. A bit later in the video, one of the co-hosts, uh Steven Fiorillo, uh made a really good point about Taiwan Semiconductor that certainly pertains to Nvidia's situation.
I'll just paraphrase it here. Uh Taiwan Semiconductor announced CapEx of 38 to 42 billion for 2025. That is a full 40% higher than a year before. They're building nine fabs all at once. And for CapEx looking forward in 2026, they're they're guiding that to 56 billion at the high point. Okay. Big players like Taiwan Semiconductor don't commit that kind of money up front unless they're dead certain that there's years and years of demand ahead.
That is certainly true for Nvidia as well. So what does the fundamental review of Zen ratings have to say? Well, Nvidia has a B rating according to the Zen ratings, equivalent to a buy, putting it in the top 10% of all stocks reviewed. Even better is the top 1% showing for its financial strength score.
Valuation is certainly not a strength, but Nvidia's trading at 30 times forward earnings is a far cry better than the nosebleed 170 level for uh Tesla. My take is that Ives is right on Nvidia. But I'm not sure about Tesla because of the extra risk from the heightened valuation, plus a history of spotty execution.
Next up we have Microsoft. And if you've been paying attention to the news, you know the stock uh nose-dived after the latest earnings report, plus investors soured uh on the software stocks in general. In whatever, 100-plus quarters of covering tech stocks, okay? The reactions of the Microsoft print and the Apple Larry David of the most top 10 shocking reactions relative to quarters that I think I've seen, period.
It went down 18% in less than a week. Recording this, it's still roughly at the same level. And he's right. It was a total overreaction. Microsoft reported Azure growth growing over 30% year-over-year and revenue was up double digits and cash from operations is expanding and yet still the stock got hammered.
But why? Dan's explanation was pretty damn blunt on the point. Then it's just like you want to see the acceleration as you're you didn't see it. And the CapEx, it's one where like they're not dedicating all that CapEx to Azure and I think that was Look, I'd say like the conference call is not handled well and and I get that, but I just think like the way they took that stock down, it's Look, a year ago no one would touch Alphabet.
I love that Alphabet comparison because it's exactly what happened here. If you sold Google based on that sentiment, you missed a massive rally. It's a classic Wall Street overreaction. One quarter doesn't meet the most aggressive expectations and suddenly everyone's running for the exits. The bear case was really about the pace of return on AI and spend, not the fundamentals themselves.
Our quant model only rates Microsoft as a hold. Financials are a strong point and that B rating is a result of Microsoft's impressive operational metrics and balance sheet ranking better than 90% of the companies out there. Now, let me just read you some of the numbers from their latest earnings report.
Revenue up 17%, operating income up 21%. Azure grew by 39% up from a 31% last quarter. So there certainly is a bit of momentum taking place here. That's not a slowdown people, far from it. Plus their commercial backlog hit 625 billion. Would I buy the dip in Microsoft? Um, no. Now this Zen Ratings is pretty clear on that front.
A hold is a hold. There are better opportunities out there. But the recent dip was hysteria, not something that fundamentals warranted. Dan is uh 100% right on that front. And by the way, if you want to see some great stocks our system is flagging as top buys right now, then claim your free copy of our special report three stocks to double this year.
I'll drop the link to the report uh in the description below or you can just scan the QR code. Now we come to the most important 30 seconds of the entire interview. Uh Every thesis has a kill shot. The one thing that breaks it all apart if things go wrong. And the host asks Ives to name his top concern.
I think the biggest bear case around the AI revolution is energy. China's way ahead of us in energy, way ahead of us in nuclear. You get the 20% of companies that actually go down the AI path from 3-4% today. I mean, you don't have enough energy. I mean, eventually it's like, "Dude, our power went out while watching Netflix." Yeah, there's a data center upgrade.
Energy, I wanted to take a national security issue. I greatly appreciate his honesty here because even one of the biggest AI bulls on the planet is able to poke holes in his own theories. Let me put some numbers on what he's described. Right now US data centers draw about 40 gigawatts of power. Uh S&P uh Global uh projects that tripling to 134 gigawatts by only 2030.
PJM uh which runs the grid across 13 states including where most data centers are being built expects 31 gigawatts of new data center load over the next five years, but only has 28 gigawatts of new generation plant. The point is that there might be an energy deficit. Now, let's remember the US electricity demand was basically flat for 20 years, under 1% annual growth.
We built our grid for a world where demand doesn't really change. In the years to come, it's going to have to absorb more new load in five years than it had in the previous 20. Okay, that gap between demand and supply has to be closed somehow and that means enormous amounts of capital is going to flow into energy infrastructure.
That is also why we've been covering energy stocks a lot more on wallstreetzen.com. The derivative plays like uh pipeline companies and nuclear aren't just energy stories anymore, they're AI infrastructure stories as well. Here's the bottom line. Dan Ives has the track record to back up his conviction and the Zen Ratings analysis helps confirm it.
His Palantir call was historic. His thesis on Tesla and Nvidia are built on real metrics and not just hype. And his most important warning about energy is the one most people are sleeping on right now. So, if you want to track Dan Ives' live analyst ratings and see exactly which stocks he's bullish on right now, we've got his full profile linked below.
Please be sure to also double-check his picks against the full Zen Ratings analysis also available on the quote pages at wallstreetzen.com. Please do me a favor and leave a comment below. Tell me which of Ives' stocks you agree with the most and why. And if you disagree with any of these stocks, then please share that as well so our community has a well-rounded perspective on these often controversial stocks.
And if you like this coverage, then check out my recent video covering another set of opportunities the market is missing. Stocks that our data says are poised for significant outperformance in 2026 and beyond.
Comments 0