Financial Wire

Microsoft, Salesforce Recent Sell-Offs Disconnected From Emerging AI Monetization Opportunities, Wedbush Says

-- Microsoft (MSFT), Salesforce (CRM) and ServiceNow's (NOW) recent sell-offs amid the broader software disposal are disconnected from the AI opportunities over the coming years, with enterprises moving to integrate AI across their tech stacks on a priority, Wedbush said in a note Monday.

The brokerage said its tech team has seen a rapid pace of enterprise AI adoption over the past few weeks, as per conversations with multiple customers and partners across the board including throughout Asia, furthering its enterprise software sector AI monetization thesis.

Increased AI usage is also lowering the cost and skill required to execute sophisticated cyber attacks, Wedbush said, adding that AI in cybersecurity does not reduce the need for endpoints and their vendors, but multiplies it as more enterprises deploy LLM-powered agents, meaning more run-time monitoring and identity governance.

In this context, Wedbush said its favorites included CrowdStrike (CRWD), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Zscaler (ZS), Check Point Software (CHKP), and Rubrik (RBRK).

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