Dan Ives' 2027 top picks: Nvidia over Apple on $4 trillion AI wave

Dan Ives' five top tech picks for 2027 — Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir, Apple and CrowdStrike, all rated Outperform — rest on a specific disagreement with the market: he argues supply, not demand, is shaping the current phase of the AI buildout and that the industry is still in its early stages. Goldman Sachs' estimate that AI-related capital investment could total $4 trillion to $8 trillion over the next five years is the backdrop for that view.

The two stocks take very different paths to his targets. Nvidia, which he calls the "foundational compute platform for the AI economy," has risen about 27% this year; Apple, with AI expected to feed device upgrades and services growth, is up about 23%. Yet the analysis notes that Apple's AI strategy still leaves one key part open to question, which is the gap the comparison turns on.

Valuation and ownership data sharpen the contrast. Nvidia's forward P/E of 25.69x sits roughly 39% below its five-year average of 42.17x, and its hedge fund ownership rose from 275 funds at the end of Q1 2026 to 285 at the end of Q2 2026, with short interest at just 1.27% of float as of September 15, 2026. Apple's forward P/E of 37.78x is about 28% above its most recent historical average of 29.55x, its hedge fund count slipped slightly from 170 to 169 and short interest was only 0.88%. The conclusion is that Nvidia's valuation allows for a slower outcome while Apple needs the AI opportunity to deliver.