Dan Ives leaves Wedbush to launch AI-focused merchant bank Yorkville Ives & Co.

Dan Ives, the tech analyst who spent a quarter century turning bullish AI calls into a personal brand at Wedbush Securities, has gone out on his own. The new venture is called Yorkville Ives & Co., and it’s billing itself as a “modern merchant bank” built specifically to ride the AI wave.

Ives officially left Wedbush on July 1 before unveiling the new firm on July 15. If you’ve followed markets at any point in the last few years, you’ve almost certainly seen Ives on CNBC or Bloomberg, usually explaining why AI stocks still have room to run.

What Yorkville Ives actually does

The firm combines proprietary equity research, strategic advisory, capital raising, and institutional trading under one roof. Traditional investment banks tend to silo these functions. Yorkville Ives is betting that an integrated approach, specifically tailored to technology, energy, and financial sectors, gives it an edge with institutional clients who want coherent AI-focused guidance across the entire deal lifecycle.

No specific funding amounts or client names have been disclosed. Ives has covered tech stocks for over 25 years, and his calls on names like Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft have made him one of the most-quoted analysts on the Street.

He also helped create the Dan IVES Wedbush AI Revolution ETF, which trades under the ticker IVES and launched in 2025.

The Trump family connection, or lack thereof

The original reporting links the launch to a “Trump family-linked securities group.” The deep research on the venture, however, has not documented any formal associations between Yorkville Ives & Co. and Trump family entities.

Why this matters for crypto and digital assets

Energy is explicitly listed as one of Yorkville Ives’ sector focuses. AI data centers are among the largest energy consumers on the planet right now, and Bitcoin miners have been pivoting their power infrastructure toward AI compute hosting. A firm that advises on both AI and energy transactions could end up brokering deals between traditional AI companies and crypto mining operations looking to diversify their revenue streams.

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