저자: 미상 · 외국인
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AI 인프라 투자 붐은 아직 초기(9회 중 3회)이며 기술주가 올해 추가 15% 상승할 수 있다는 Dan Ives 관점을 소개. 애플 목표가 400달러 상향, AI 서비스 150억 달러 기회 언급. 3개 종목을 AI 승자로 제시: 팔란티어(매출 16.3억 달러, 전년比 85% 성장, NDR 150%), 인텔(데이터센터·AI 부문 50억 달러 이상, 18A 수율 개선, 파운드리 패키징 성장), 팔로알토네트웍스(차세대 보안 ARR 63억 달러, 전년比 33% 성장, 비GAAP 영업이익률 30% 이상 유지). 과거 실적 위주 근거이며 구체적 가격 목표는 종목별로 제시되지 않음.
다듬은 글
Wall Street is currently a battlefield of conflicting narratives, but for Wedbush's Dan Ives, the signal is drowning out the noise. While the bears are sounding the alarm on a dot-com style bubble, Ives has just issued a message to the market. We aren't at the end of the party. We are barely in the third inning of a nine-inning AI revolution.
In a recent CNBC interview, Ives projected that tech stocks are primed to extend their gains by another 15% this year alone. This isn't just retail enthusiasm. It's backed by a staggering $1 trillion global AI infrastructure build-out that is currently seeing a 12:1 demand to supply ratio for the high-end chips and software required to power the next generation of enterprise growth.
The numbers suggest we are moving past the speculation phase and into a high-stakes monetization era. Every $1 spent on AI hardware is now projected to trigger an 8 to $10 multiplier effect across software and services. Ives has even doubled down on his conviction, raising his Apple price target to a street-high $400, citing a looming $15 billion AI services opportunity that most of the market is completely discounting.
But for the active investor, the real alpha lies beyond the Magnificent Seven. Ives is identifying a green light environment for a new tier of winners that are moving from the periphery to the epicenter. Today, we're breaking down three specific stocks Ives is highlighting as the essential plays for the next leg of this 2026 rally.
The titans of defense AI, the architects of the 18A process node, and the masters of cybersecurity consolidation. stock Dan Ives calls the software layer of the entire AI revolution, Palantir, ticker PLTR. While the broader market has been fixated on hardware and silicon, Palantir has quietly positioned itself as the indispensable orchestration layer that sits right on top of that massive infrastructure spend.
We are witnessing a fundamental shift where Palantir is transitioning from a speculative software play into essential operational infrastructure. The numbers from the most recent quarter are, quite frankly, staggering. We're talking about 85% year-over-year revenue growth, hitting $1.63 billion, fueled by a 133% explosion in US commercial revenue.
This isn't just growth, it's a structural takeover of the enterprise market. What makes the Palantir thesis so compelling right now is the Jevons paradox in action. As the cost of AI tokens drops, corporations aren't spending less, they are using AI more, embedding it into every facet of their operations.
But as these companies realize that deploying AI is actually incredibly difficult due to governance and permission hurdles, they are turning to Palantir's ontology. This isn't just a data layer, it's a translation layer that defines how a corporation actually functions. The data proves the stickiness of this model, with net dollar retention hitting a massive 150% and top-tier customers now spending an average of $108 million annually.
Beyond the commercial sector, the government vertical is seeing a massive second wind. Revenue there jumped 84% to $687 million as platforms like Maven and Ship OS move from experimental phases to structural requirements for national security. Even as the administration looks to trim inefficient consulting spend, Palantir stands to benefit as a high-efficiency software replacement.
Investors should look past the recent price consolidation and focus on the rule of 40 score, which currently sits at a world-class 145%. With adjusted free cash flow margins at 57% and management aggressively raising full-year guidance, Palantir is proving it can scale rapidly while remaining highly profitable.
As AI agents become the standard for global business, Palantir's role as the governed orchestration engine makes it a unique infrastructure play that is still in the early innings of its true valuation potential. Shifting our focus from the software layer to the physical heart of the machine, our second stock is a company that has undergone a radical transformation from a fallen legacy giant to a high-octane bet on the second wave of AI, Intel, ticker INTC.
For years, the bears had an easy time betting against this stock, citing poor execution and a loss of process leadership. But as we move into May 2026, that narrative is dead. Intel is no longer a turnaround story. It has become a leveraged play on the critical infrastructure required for he first wave of AI was all about training models on GPUs.
But the second wave, driven by inference and agentic AI, is shifting the spotlight back to the central processing unit. In the training phase, you might only need one CPU to manage eight accelerators. However, in an inference environment where real-time coordination and memory management are king, that ratio narrows significantly toward a one-to-one relationship.
We are seeing this CPU resurgence manifest in the numbers right now. Intel's data center and AI segment grew to over $5 billion in Q1 2026, marking a 22% increase year over year. Furthermore, Intel is building a physical moat that software-heavy rivals simply cannot replicate. Their 18A process node is hitting yields ahead of schedule, and the company has reframed its advanced packaging business using technologies like EMIB and Foveros 3D from a niche play into a multi-billion dollar a year revenue engine.
With AI chips becoming physically larger and more complex, Intel is positioning itself as the vital secondary source of fabrication capacity in a world starving for supply. The structural support for this expansion is equally impressive. The US government has solidified its commitment with nearly $9 billion in stock-based investments and Chips Act grants, effectively labeling domestic advanced logic manufacturing a national security priority.
With revenue growth returning for the first time since 2021 and demand for AI PCs and Xeon processors outstripping supply by over $1 billion in potential revenue, Intel has reclaimed its seat at the table of essential AI infrastructure. Now that we've covered the software orchestration and the physical hardware, we must address the critical layer that protects them both.
Led by the sentinel of the AI revolution, Palo Alto Networks, ticker PANW. While much of the market's attention has been focused on the productivity gains of AI, a parallel and much darker reality is emerging. Every AI agent deployed and every autonomous workflow created essentially expands a corporation's attack surface, creating machine speed vulnerabilities that legacy security playbooks simply cannot handle.
Palo Alto Networks has positioned itself not just as a participant in this shift, but as the essential lateral beneficiary of the entire AI boom. It's a dream they're getting the moment. The company is currently at a massive inflection point driven by a platformization strategy that is clearly winning the market.
In Q2 2026, Palo Alto delivered a 14.9% year-over-year revenue increase, reaching $2.6 billion, but the real story lies in the quality of that growth. Their next-generation security recurring revenue surged by 33% to over $6.3 billion. This isn't just one-time sales. This is contractually embedded revenue that is compounding at an incredible scale.
Their Prisma S product, which focuses on AI runtime security, recently tripled its customer base, proving that enterprises are desperate for specialized protection as they scale their AI initiatives. Financially, the company is demonstrating rare operational maturity. For three consecutive quarters, Palo Alto has maintained non-GAAP operating margins above 30% while targeting a massive 40% free cash flow margin by 2028.
This level of profitability, combined with a record $16 , provides immense visibility into their future earnings power. Management is so confident in this trajectory that they have set a bold target of $20 billion in next-generation ARR by 2030. By integrating major acquisitions like CyberArk and Chronosphere, Palo Alto is building a comprehensive identity and security cloud that makes them virtually irreplaceable.
In an era where state-sponsored cyberattacks and AI-augmented fishing are becoming daily operating conditions, cybersecurity has transitioned from a discretionary expense to a board-level governance obligation. As Dan Ives rightly points out, the AI revolution is not a single event. It is a structural shifting of the global economy that is still in its infancy.
By looking beyond the primary names and focusing on the software layer in Palantir, the infrastructure resurgence in Intel, and the critical security moat of Palo Alto Networks, investors can position themselves for the next 15% to 20% leg of this tech bull run. These companies aren't just riding a trend.
They are building the bedrock upon which the next decade of global commerce will be conducted. The third inning is where the heavy hitters make their move. Make sure you're in the game.
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