The sell-off in AI infrastructure stocks including CoreWeave, IREN and Nebius represents a buying opportunity rather than a warning sign, according to Dan Ives at Yorkville Ives.
Ives, one of Wall Street's most closely followed technology analysts, said the pullback has been driven by the 10-year Treasury yield pushing above 5% and political noise around data centre permitting.
Demand picture unchanged
He argued that neither factor changes the underlying demand picture.
"Rates are a financing question, not a demand question," Ives wrote in a note published on Wednesday. "The structural need for compute does not reset because the 10-year moves 75 basis points."
Yorkville Ives said its checks on the ground in Asia this week pointed to deal activity accelerating in Korea and Taiwan, with chip demand running at roughly 13 to 1 against available supply.
The firm said contracted backlogs and tenant pipelines across the neocloud group reflected demand that had already been signed, not speculative capacity waiting for a buyer.
Ives acknowledged that 5% to 10% of planned data centre projects would not be built, due to local opposition and regulatory headwinds, but said that attrition would not meaningfully change the total number constructed.
Build-out continues
He forecast that between 800 and 1,000 data centres would be built over the coming years, with appetite from hyperscalers and frontier AI laboratories keeping compute supply constrained.
The firm said it would view any cancellation of contracted capacity or a pullback in hyperscaler capital expenditure guidance as reasons to change its stance, but said none of that was visible in current data.
"What would change our view is a demand signal, not a rate signal," Ives said.
Upcoming earnings from the major hyperscalers are expected to provide the next read on capital spending intentions, with Yorkville Ives saying it expected those numbers to reinforce rather than challenge the investment case.
