Dan Ives was ready to talk.
Ives, the outspoken tech analyst and artificial-intelligence bull who recently left Wedbush Securities, had just announced his next act: Yorkville Ives & Co., a financial services firm in New Jersey.
"Research is in my DNA," he told Barron's on Wednesday during a video call from a car ride, wearing one of his signature pastel shirts. "It's something that I love. I eat and breathe it."
In his role at Yorkville Ives, which calls itself "the modern merchant bank for the age of AI," Ives will cover tech companies as he did at Wedbush for eight years. He'll build out the firm's research department, he said, which is still awaiting approval from Finra, the regulatory body that oversees sell-side analysts.
Ives surprised investors when he left Wedbush earlier this month. The firm didn't have a replacement lined up, and Ives' departure came just one day after he had initiated coverage of SpaceX.
His rapid stream of tech reports -- he covered some 45 companies for the firm -- and regular TV appearances had made Wedbush synonymous with Ives. Wedbush seized on Ives' star power when it took the unusual step of launching Ives-branded exchange-traded funds over the past year.
As an equity analyst, Ives is subject to Finra rules prohibiting conduct that compromises objectivity. A Barron's investigation published this past January showed how Ives appeared to test those bounds. He worked to advance AI -- meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in 2025 to represent the publicly traded crypto firm he chaired -- all while rating the majority of the stocks he covered as Outperform.
Ives' unconventional roles weren't regularly disclosed and frequently overlapped with his research. Six weeks after Barron's cover story, Ives stepped down from Eightco Holdings, a digital-asset company that now trades around 60 cents a share. He remains an adviser to Zeta Global Holdings, a tech company that competes with Salesforce and calls itself "the AI-powered marketing cloud."
Wedbush said in January that Barron's reporting conflated distinct matters, and that Ives "has an exceptional 25-year record built on deep industry knowledge, credibility, a strong work ethic, and most importantly, unwavering integrity." He appeared on CNBC after our article ran and said his work was proper: "I get the scrutiny, but everything's vetted. If I chew gum, Wedbush has to know about it."
Ives didn't return requests for comment for our cover story, his representatives declined our requests to interview him, and he blocked both of us on LinkedIn and X.
So when Ives' publicist reached out on Wednesday to set up an interview after the Yorkville announcement, we were surprised.
We asked Ives on Wednesday about his exit from Wedbush; why it was the right time to start something new; how his new firm's structure works; and the overlapping roles we wrote about in January.
"Look, a decision like this doesn't come lightly," he said. "I had such a phenomenal eight years at Wedbush. But I just felt like it was the right time, right partners, right place to do something like this."
When did he start up discussions with Yorkville? What led to his departure from Eightco? Why did he start adding disclosures to his posts on X after we published our article?
We didn't hear many specifics. "I needed to simplify and make sure anything I do, I'm 100% in," he said. "It was just the right time to simplify. Everything that Eightco is doing -- I wish them the best in all their success. But for me, it was kind of the right time to simplify."
Ives and his rep ended the call after about 20 minutes, offering to answer additional questions via email.
In our follow-up we asked again about Ives' sudden exit from Wedbush, and how Yorkville is structured. We asked how Ives knew the Yorkville team previously, whether he has a stake in the new company, and whether Yorkville Ives ties into a partnership between a Yorkville unit and Trump Media & Technology Group, whose interim CEO also runs a Yorkville blank-check company.
Later that day, Ives' PR rep said they wouldn't be answering those questions.
"The company and Dan Ives declined to comment further on these leading questions," wrote Marcy Simon, a spokeswoman for Ives, Yorkville Ives, and Eightco, adding a statement from Ives: "I am proud of my time at Wedbush, I am grateful to my colleagues there, and my transition was handled appropriately."
Ives has a megaphone, with 300,000 followers on X and frequent media appearances. His stock recommendations move markets. Investors rely on views from him and other sell-side analysts to make informed decisions about where to put their money -- especially as people try to evaluate whether companies' AI growth claims are rooted in hype or reality.
During our call on Wednesday, we asked Ives whether he and his new team had discussed our earlier reporting on his overlapping roles. He said, "A number of the roles I no longer have. I'm so laser-focused on -- this is a gargantuan task, right? It's not just my role as an analyst. It's helping build out a modern merchant bank. This is something where I really needed to be 110% focused."
Yorkville Ives says it will offer "proprietary equity research, strategic advisory, capital raising, and principal investment." It expects to launch the research business this quarter, subject to Finra's approval.
The company's merchant banking model -- a lender making private investments in companies using its own capital -- is a throwback. Some merchant banks exist today, but the business faded after the 2008-09 financial crisis. The Dodd-Frank Act's Volcker rule limited lenders' activities, in part to prevent conflicts of interest in their businesses.
As our interview with Ives wound down, Simon, who was on the call, said the analyst had to go to his next meeting. "I'm unblocking you," Ives told us.
Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com and Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 17, 2026 11:02 ET (15:02 GMT)
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