Dan Ives

Senior Analyst, Wedbush Securities - Publicly arguing the software sell-off is overdone

An estimated 220 billion lines of COBOL code still run in production every day, processing 95% of ATM transactions and roughly $3 trillion in daily commerce. For decades, understanding and modernizing that code has required large teams of specialized consultants working for months or years. On February 23, Anthropic published a playbook showing how its Claude Code tool can automate the most labor-intensive phases of that work—mapping dependencies, documenting workflows, and identifying risks across thousands of files—and IBM shares immediately fell 13.2%, their worst single-day drop in more than 25 years.

Updated 5 days ago

Wedbush Securities Managing Director, Equity Research - Bullish on Nvidia post-Groq deal

On Christmas Eve 2025, Nvidia paid $20 billion for Groq's assets—nearly triple the AI chip startup's $6.9 billion valuation from three months earlier. The deal brings Groq's founder Jonathan Ross, who created Google's original Tensor Processing Unit, and his breakthrough inference technology into Nvidia's fold. It's Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, nearly three times bigger than its $7 billion Mellanox purchase. By structuring the deal as a "non-exclusive licensing agreement" rather than an outright acquisition, Nvidia bypasses Hart-Scott-Rodino Act merger review requirements that trigger automatic FTC scrutiny—following Microsoft's 2024 playbook with Inflection AI. The deal's unusual structure has drawn immediate analyst warnings about "the fiction of competition" as Groq's leadership and technical talent move to Nvidia while the company nominally continues independently. Adding to the intrigue: 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. serves as partner, was among Groq's September investors who saw their stake nearly triple in just three months.

Updated Dec 27, 2025