AI mega-bull Dan Ives says to buy the dip in these 5 stocks after this week's 'software armageddon'

• Software stocks tanked this week amid investor panic over the threat of AI disruption.
• Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst and AI mega bull, says the sell-off means tech stocks are at a discount.
• Ives suggested buying the dip for five tech stocks during the historic crash.

This week's "software armageddon" is nothing more than a tech stock "garage sale," according to Wedbush analyst and AI mega-bull Dan Ives.

While software stocks tanked this week amid investor panic over the threat of AI disruption, Ives wrote in an industry note published Wednesday that, rather than an industry-wide catastrophe, the sell-off is an opportunity to buy typically high-priced stocks at a discount.

Ives's bullishness is hardly new; he has spent years urging investors to lean into tech selloffs, even as skeptics warn that enthusiasm around AI risks obscuring tougher questions about earnings growth, competition, and the pace of enterprise adoption.

This week's sharp pullback — the worst sell-off since the "Liberation Day" market crash — has revived those concerns, underscoring the risk that some AI-linked stocks may struggle to justify their lofty expectations.

"We believe the market is baking in a doomsday scenario for software companies in the near-term, which we believe is extremely overblown, as many customers won't be willing to put their data at risk to capitalize on AI implementation strategies until there is less risk with these migration projects," Ives and his fellow analysts wrote.

He added, "Is AI a headwind in the near-term for software? YES!...however, the magnitude of this software sell-off is a major head scratcher and is factoring in an Armageddon scenario for the sector that is far from reality in our view."

Here are the five tech stocks Ives and his colleagues recommended to buy now, while they've dipped.

Microsoft Corp.

Closing at $414.19 on Wednesday, Microsoft is down more than 12% so far this year. Among the world's largest software companies by market value, its fortunes are increasingly tied to Azure cloud growth and its multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, which has made AI tools like Copilot a central part of its long-term strategy.

"We believe that Microsoft is on its way to accelerating cloud and AI monetization, which is going to comprise a bigger piece of Redmond going forward and will ultimately spur growth and margins over the coming years," he wrote.

Ives's price target for Microsoft, which he projects will be a "core winner" of the AI revolution, is $575.

Palantir Technologies, Inc.

Palantir stock has sunk more than 16% year to date, closing at $139.54 on Wednesday. The company sells data analytics and AI software to governments and large enterprises, and has drawn renewed investor attention over the last year as it has pushed deeper into commercial markets.

"As enterprises move from AI experimentation to production, Palantir's value proposition becomes more relevant, not less, as AI demand is leading to new uses where speed-to-deployment and outcome-driven ROI matter more than model performance," Ives wrote. "Palantir's value is not in model performance, but in embedding AI into workflows with guardrails, approvals, and real-time feedback."

With a price target of $230, Ives believes Palantir "has a golden path to becoming a trillion-dollar market cap company."

Snowflake, Inc.

Snowflake has seen the sharpest sell-off of the bunch, dropping over 23% so far this year, and closing at $165.29 on Wednesday. The company provides cloud-based data storage and analytics tools for large enterprises and has faced investor pressure as competition has intensified among companies positioning themselves as essential infrastructure for AI workloads.

"One of the misconceptions in this sell-off is that enterprises are going to bypass software platforms and connect frontier models directly in the data, but enterprises require security, access controls, lineage, and governance before AI interacts/connects with production systems," Ives wrote. "This positions SNOW as the trusted layer between enterprise data and external models like Anthropic, further reinforcing SNOW'S position as an AI winner moving forward."

Ives expects Snowflake to outperform, with a target price of $270.

Salesforce, Inc.

Down more than 21% so far this year, Salesforce closed Wednesday at $199.44. Salesforce, best known for its customer relationship management software, has been working to reignite growth by layering agentic and generative AI tools onto its core products while navigating slower enterprise IT spending.

"We believe that CRM is still a long-term winner of the AI Revolution despite the company finding itself in the epicenter of the Software sell-off as we think the market is overlooking key details about Salesforce's differentiated position against the negative overhang," Ives wrote. "With a strong pipeline to capitalize on, we believe that CRM remains well-positioned to be an AI winner as its Agentforce strategy continues to ride the wave of its install base."

Ives' $375 price target reflects his belief that it has a "massive" market opportunity.

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.

Closing at $415.36 on Wednesday, CrowdStrike is down more than 8% so far this year. CrowdStrike is a leading cloud-native cybersecurity firm — a business that has remained in focus as companies contend with rising cyber threats tied to AI and cloud adoption.

"CrowdStrike's role is industry agnostic in the sense that AI is disrupting the entire playing field, but the need to secure workloads and operations from AI continues to be essential, especially as usage is set to significantly increase," Ives wrote. "We believe that CRWD's position as the gold standard of cybersecurity remains firmly unchanged in the face of this Software Armageddon."

Ives set a $600 price target for the stock.