Anthropic is closing in on a $1 trillion valuation after securing $65 billion in new funding on Thursday, and at least one prominent Wall Street analyst says the AI investment story is far from over. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe on Friday that the company's current valuation of $965 billion is just a preview of what is coming across the broader technology sector.
According to CNBC, Ives said the Anthropic figure is "just the tip of the sphere," and directed investors to look further down the AI supply chain. He pointed specifically to data layer companies including Snowflake, Datadog, and InnoData as the next wave of beneficiaries. "Our view is the second, third, fourth derivative, just like we saw this week with Snowflake and Dell, is showing where the spending is," he said.
Ives also told CNBC that "for the first time in 30 years, the U.S. is ahead of China" on technology, framing the current moment as a structural shift rather than a temporary rally. His broader forecast calls for the Nasdaq to top 30,000 points by 2027, a prediction he has repeated across multiple CNBC appearances. He described the current stretch of market activity as a "historic" period for Wall Street.
Much of that history is being written by a cluster of mega-IPOs expected to land in 2026. SpaceX confirmed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it expects to go public on June 12, with a target valuation of $1.75 trillion on the Nasdaq. That would make it potentially the largest float in history. OpenAI and Anthropic have also announced intentions to go public later this year. Ives described the three companies as "the three pillars of the fourth industrial revolution."
Of Anthropic specifically, he said, "Right now, in terms of Anthropic, it's the best model in the world, and I don't think there's a dispute there." He added that the company's public offering "is going to put more pressure on Open AI, which is foundational to the AI revolution."
Not everyone shares his optimism. John Blank, chief equity strategist at Zacks, told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe on Thursday that he reads the IPO rush as a warning signal. "I see it as a market top," Blank said. "Everybody knows the top is pretty close to being around and usually it is advertised by these giant IPOs. Back in 1999, we saw the same kind of thing where people were just rushing to get these IPOs out."
The dot-com comparison is one Ives has addressed directly. He argues the current moment resembles 1997, not 1999, in terms of bubble risk, suggesting the rally still has room to run before any meaningful correction. Other analysts have not been as confident, with several drawing parallel lines between the late-1990s boom and the current frenzy around AI valuations.
One additional detail gives Ives' case some ground to stand on. All three companies, SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, have yet to generate an annual profit. However, Anthropic is expected to post its first-ever profitable quarter in its upcoming earnings report, which would mark a significant milestone for a company that has grown almost entirely on investor capital. Whether that profit materializes, and whether it satisfies public market investors with higher scrutiny than private backers, remains to be seen as the June 12 SpaceX listing approaches.
