Overview
Analyst activity around artificial intelligence and related infrastructure produced a flurry of notable moves this week, spanning companies focused on space transport, cloud computing, semiconductors, enterprise software and commerce platforms. Each broker note centers on how AI-related demand and product rollouts are reshaping addressable markets and near-term earnings dynamics.
Raymond James opens coverage of SpaceX with $800 target
Raymond James began coverage of SpaceX with a Strong Buy recommendation and set a Street-high price target of $800. The firm framed its thesis around the convergence of industrialized access to orbit and AI, describing the combination as "the most significant infrastructure convergence since the advent of the Internet." Analyst Brian Gesuale stressed that SpaceX is assembling what the firm sees as a foundational platform for a new generation of industrial capacity across transportation, communications, compute, manufacturing and energy.
Raymond James put a very large number on the opportunity, estimating a total addressable market that approaches $30 trillion. Central to the analyst's argument is Starship. According to the note, Starship reduces the cost of transporting mass to orbit by more than 99% while boosting payload capacity by an order of magnitude. The firm said this dynamic shifts orbital launch from a bespoke aerospace capability into a transportation network characterized by commercial aviation-like cadence and steadily falling unit costs. The report drew parallels to earlier infrastructure revolutions such as railroads, electrification, containerization and the internet.
The note described a "powerful infrastructure flywheel": Falcon-funded Starlink, Starlink funds Starship, and Starship enables the next generation of platforms. Raymond James projected dramatic growth for SpaceX, modeling a rise from roughly $38.5 billion in revenue and $17.7 billion in EBITDA today to more than $837 billion in revenue and $696 billion in EBITDA by 2031.
The $800 target, Raymond James said, is based on a discounted cash flow using a 27 times exit multiple applied to 2031 estimated EBITDA. The firm contrasted that 27 times exit multiple with a peer group multiple of 60.7 times on 2028 estimates.
Bank of America keeps Buy on Alibaba ahead of results
Bank of America reiterated its Buy rating on Alibaba and kept a $172 price objective per American Depositary Share. The bank characterized Alibaba as "one of the most compelling AI plays in China" ahead of the company’s June-quarter results. Analysts led by Joyce Ju forecast June-quarter revenue growth of 8.8% year-over-year, in line with consensus.
BofA expects AI-driven demand to lift cloud revenue growth to 45% year-over-year, up from 38% in the March quarter, and to expand cloud margins to 11% from 9%. At the same time, China’s advertising and commissions business - described as customer management revenue - is forecast to decline 7.7% year-over-year, reflecting weak industry conditions.
For the quarter, Bank of America projected consolidated EBITA of RMB26.2 billion, a 33% year-over-year decline but above consensus. The firm highlighted narrowing quick-commerce (QC) losses, forecasting QC losses of RMB10 billion versus RMB18 billion in the March quarter, and estimating average loss per order improving to RMB1.7 from RMB3.2.
Looking further out, BofA said fiscal 2027 could mark a key earnings inflection, with core commerce profits returning to growth as QC losses narrow materially. The bank maintained its fiscal 2027-28 revenue forecasts broadly intact while nudging earnings estimates up by 0-2%, citing disciplined cost management. At 18 times and 13 times projected fiscal 2027 and 2028 non-GAAP earnings respectively, BofA argued that the stock does not fully reflect an earnings inflection driven by commerce profit recovery, cloud and AI-led growth. The bank’s constructive view was supported by accelerating cloud growth, a credible roadmap to QC profitability, and increasing AI monetization optionality.
Mizuho says Samsung sell-off overdone, memory fundamentals still solid
Mizuho TMT specialist Jordan Klein judged that investors reacted too strongly to Samsung’s preliminary second-quarter results. Klein argued the semiconductor sell-off was a momentum unwind rather than evidence of fundamental deterioration in the memory business.
While Samsung’s revenues missed expectations, Klein said operating profit was "a strong beat if you exclude one-time bonus expenses," estimating implied memory operating margins of over 80%. He emphasized the scale of that single-quarter operating profit, saying "That OP in a single quarter is more than Samsung reported in total for past three years combined," and described market reactions to the preliminary numbers as "extremely short-sighted."
Klein attributed the revenue miss to weakness in mobile devices, TVs and LCD panels rather than to memory. He identified the key catalyst for sentiment as Samsung’s comments and outlook for the memory business and the broader industry into the second half of 2026, due at the end of July. On pricing, Klein described third-quarter DRAM and NAND trends as "very strong vs Q2 levels," and cited some forecasts that point to NAND rising 35-40% quarter-on-quarter.
Klein added that upcoming results from TSMC and ASML would be more important for semiconductor price action than Samsung’s preliminary results, and he described valuations for both companies as looking very attractive. He also referenced a bullish server forecast from Asian hardware analyst Dale Gai as reinforcing his positive tilt on Intel and the CPU semiconductor narrative, as well as on DRAM suppliers. He framed dips in AMD as buying opportunities ahead of AMD’s July 23 AI event.
Bernstein trims Salesforce on weak Agentforce feedback
Bernstein downgraded Salesforce from Outperform to Sector Weight and removed its price target, citing disappointing customer feedback on Salesforce’s Agentforce AI product. Analyst Jackson Ader said the firm’s checks and customer conversations "have not been strong, nor has the feedback been on Agentforce." He added that disclosed numbers "do not signal building momentum" and pointed to a recent CIO survey in which Salesforce was "a standout for the wrong reasons."
Bernstein continued to view Salesforce as an entrenched incumbent platform, but concluded that evidence of sustained acceleration from Agentforce is further out than expected, if it materializes at all. Customer feedback coalesced around two themes: that customer data is not organized sufficiently for robust AI work, and that Agentforce "as a product, just isn’t there." The analyst also noted that more CIOs in the Bernstein survey expect to deprioritize Salesforce within their IT budgets over the next 12 months than expect to increase spending. Ader said he has struggled to find corroborating evidence in financial disclosures for management’s commentary that net-new average order value is growing faster than overall average order value.
Stifel upgrades Shopify, sees sustained high revenue growth
Stifel upgraded Shopify to Buy and lifted its price target to $150 from $110. Analyst J. Parker Lane described Shopify as "writing the agentic commerce playbook" and said the company continues to take share across legacy replatforming, enterprise, B2B, international and payments. Based on survey work and industry discussions, Stifel outlined a path to more than 30% revenue growth in 2026, with sustained mid-20s growth beyond that.
Lane highlighted observable signs of market share gains. First-quarter gross merchandise value of $101 billion represented 35% year-on-year growth, while the U.S. retail e-commerce market expanded 9.8% over the same period. The enterprise segment is showing an inflection, with large merchants generating more than $100 million in GMV nearly doubling over the prior two years. Stifel noted B2B GMV grew 80% in the first quarter and international GMV rose 45%.
Lane flagged geographic imbalance as a source of potential upside. Although the U.S. accounted for 40% of global e-commerce sales excluding China, it represented 63% of Shopify’s 2025 revenue, implying considerable international headroom. He concluded that Shopify’s disciplined operating model and capital allocation provide the company flexibility as agentic commerce evolves from early-stage to scale.
What this collection of calls signals for markets
Taken together, the analyst notes underscore divergent but AI-connected investment themes: huge infrastructure bets on space and orbital transport; cloud services as a primary monetization channel for AI; memory and semiconductor supply and pricing dynamics; skepticism around early enterprise AI feature monetization; and platform-level gains in digital commerce. These dynamics have implications for sectors including aerospace and defense, cloud and data centers, semiconductors and memory, enterprise software and e-commerce.
Bottom line
Brokerage research this week reinforced that AI is a focal point across multiple layers of the technology stack and adjacent industries. The notes ranged from highly bullish long-term infrastructure forecasts in the case of SpaceX to tactical cautions about product reception for enterprise AI offerings. Investors and sector watchers will likely focus on upcoming company results and product updates cited by analysts - particularly corporate commentary that addresses how AI is changing demand and margins - before recalibrating valuations.