A prominent Wall Street tech analyst says investors may be reading the AI boom all wrong.
In a new CNBC interview, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives pushes back on the idea that AI tools from companies like Anthropic and other startups will sideline traditional cybersecurity vendors.
He believes that the current skepticism around cyber stocks is misplaced.
“The view is that cyber can be disintermediated by some of these tools, whether it’s Anthropic or some of the, you know, really the startup tools that are coming from an AI perspective. To my point is, look, coming into this year, all of our checks are showing cybersecurity should actually see anywhere between 300 and 500 bps acceleration.”
According to Ives, investors are currently viewing artificial intelligence as a headwind for the tech subsector when it is actually a catalyst for growth driven by emerging AI-based security threats.
“I get it’s a guilty until proven innocent, but cybersecurity, this is going to be I think it’s a moment that inflects and ultimately it’s going to be a huge growth area for the sector that I don’t think is being factored in here… Cybersecurity I think is being mispriced, that AI is a headwind, where in fact, I think it actually is gonna change the view of the sector for years to come, as well as I think it’s gonna be a huge catalyst for M&A.”
Wedbush Securities currently has an outperform rating for CrowdStrike (CRWD), Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and Zscaler (ZS) with price targets of $600, $225 and $350, respectively.
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