Google, Nvidia among Wedbush's top 30 tech names defining the future of AI

Wedbush has selected 30 tech names, including American companies Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ) and Nvidia ( NASDAQ: NVDA ) and China's Alibaba ( NYSE: BABA ) and Baidu ( NASDAQ: BIDU ), that it believes would "define the future of the AI theme over the coming years."

Analysts led by Daniel Ives said these tech stocks are closely tied to the AI Revolution ranging from hyperscalers, cybersecurity, software, semiconductors, internet, and autonomous/robotics. AI Revolution represents the biggest tech transformation in over 40 years, according to the analysts.

"The start of this $2 trillion of AI spending all began with the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and built out by Godfather of AI Jensen [Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang] and Nvidia as they are the only game in town with their chips the new gold and oil," said Ives and his team.

The analysts noted that there is one company in the world that is the foundation for the AI Revolution and that is Nvidia, with the "Godfather of AI Jensen having the best perch and vantage point" to discuss overall enterprise AI demand and the appetite for Nvidia's AI chips looking forward.

The analysts added that while the first steps in AI deployments are around Nvidia chips and the cloud stalwarts, importantly they estimate that for every $1 spent on Nvidia, there is an $8 to $10 multiplier across the rest of the tech ecosystem.

In addition, Ives and his team said that while AI starts with Jensen and Nvidia as the only game in town from an AI chip perspective — AMD ( NASDAQ: AMD ) joining the party soon — the stalwart cloud/hyperscale players have been another instrumental part of this first key phase of the AI Revolution, being led by Microsoft ( NASDAQ: MSFT ) and now also seeing Alphabet's ( NASDAQ: GOOG ) ( NASDAQ: GOOGL ) Google Cloud Platform, or GCP, and Amazon's ( NASDAQ: AMZN ) Amazon Web Services, or AWS, finding major cloud and AI momentum.

"The impact of the AI cycle on consumer Internet will be massive and it will start with the cloud service divisions, Amazon's AWS and Alphabet's GCP," said the analysts. They added that AWS and GCP would acquire AI-capable chips, build AI-capable service offerings, and sell those services into their respective installed bases.

On this consumer tech theme, the analysts continue to like Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms ( NASDAQ: META ) as their favorite tech plays. The analysts are seeing many IT departments focused on foundational hyper scale deployments for AI around Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, with a focus on the software-driven use cases currently underway as high priority AI use cases have been identified and now being driven/accelerated across several verticals

Ives and his team compiled a list of names "to play in the 4th Industrial Revolution."

List of Ives AI 30.

Hyperscalers: Microsoft ( NASDAQ: MSFT ), Google ( NASDAQ: GOOG ) ( NASDAQ: GOOGL ), Amazon ( NASDAQ: AMZN ) and Oracle ( NYSE: ORCL ).

Software: Palantir Technologies ( NASDAQ: PLTR ), Salesforce ( NYSE: CRM ), IBM ( NYSE: IBM ), ServiceNow ( NYSE: NOW ), Snowflake ( NYSE: SNOW ), Adobe ( NASDAQ: ADBE ), Pegasystems ( NASDAQ: PEGA ), MongoDB ( NASDAQ: MDB ), C3.ai ( NYSE: AI ), Elastic ( NYSE: ESTC ), Innodata ( NASDAQ: INOD ), AND SoundHound AI ( NASDAQ: SOUN ).

Consumer Internet: Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL ), Meta ( NASDAQ: META ), Alibaba ( NYSE: BABA ) and Baidu ( NASDAQ: BIDU ).

Cybersecurity: Palo Alto Networks ( NASDAQ: PANW ), Zscaler ( NASDAQ: ZS ) and CyberArk Software ( NASDAQ: CYBR ).

Autonomous/Robotics: Tesla ( NASDAQ: TSLA ) and Oklo ( NYSE: OKLO ).

Semiconductor/Hardware: Nvidia ( NASDAQ: NVDA ), Advanced Micro Devices ( NASDAQ: AMD ), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ( NYSE: TSM ), Broadcom ( NASDAQ: AVGO ) and Micron Technology ( NASDAQ: MU ).

Ives and his team said now the time has come for the broader software space to get in on the AIRevolution. They believe the use cases are exploding, enterprise consumption phase is ahead of us in the rest of 2025, launch of Large Language Models, or LLM, across the board, and the true adoption of generative AI will be a major catalyst for the software sector and key players to benefit from this once in a generation fourth Industrial Revolution is set to benefit the tech space.

The analysts added that 2025 has been an inflection year within enterprise generative AI as true adoption has begun by going from idea to scale as more companies are looking to invest (despite tariff uncertainty) into AI to decrease costs/increase productivity.

"It's all about the use cases exploding which is driving this tech transformation being led by software and chips into the rest of 2025 and beyond and thus speaks to our tech bull and AI Revolution thesis with these 30 core names," said Ives and his team.