Dan Ives launches merchant bank to fund mid-cap tech
After 25 years as a leading tech analyst, Dan Ives is launching Yorkville Ives to provide capital and advisory services to mid-tier technology companies overlooked in the current AI investment boom.
Dan Ives has left Wedbush Securities after 25 years to launch Yorkville Ives, a merchant banking venture partnered with Yorkville Securities. The move transforms one of Wall Street's most vocal technology bulls from an observer of the AI boom into a direct market participant.
The new firm targets a structural gap in tech finance. Ives argues that while mega-cap names like Nvidia are overwhelmed with investor attention, mid-tier public companies struggle to secure capital partners. “There’s so many other companies on the side of the public side, they’re sort in the corner saying, ‘Could anyone talk to us who could partner with us?'” he said.
Yorkville Ives will combine M&A advisory, debt and equity trading, and tech research with its own balance sheet. Ives explicitly models the firm on 1990s outfits like Thomas Weisel's, arguing that modern finance forces a choice between balance-sheet-constrained bulge brackets and capital-light advisory boutiques. “A lot of banks … they won’t put their own money [in], they don’t have the capital,” he said.
This merchant banking model largely vanished over the past three decades. Post-2008 regulations like the Volcker Rule restricted proprietary risk-taking at major banks, while boutique advisory firms deliberately shed balance sheets to pitch independence. Private credit firms have the capital but lack a research-driven advisory arm. By deploying his own capital, Ives is betting that mid-market tech firms need an advisor willing to co-invest.
To mitigate conflicts of interest, Ives emphasized a strict separation between the banking and research sides. “There’s a Chinese wall,” he said. “I’m going to be spending all my time in research—the same type of research that investors around the world have gotten to follow from me.”
Ives frames the launch as validation of his long-running AI thesis. “Look, I’m an example of what I’ve preached over the years that AI will ultimately create more jobs than what it takes away,” he said. He dismissed fears of an AI bubble, comparing the current infrastructure buildout to “building the Vegas Strip in 1955. ... Without the mobsters.”
The partnership carries a notable complication. A subsidiary of Yorkville Americas currently serves as the investment adviser to the Truth Social Funds, a suite of ETFs tied to Trump Media. Ives stated his relationship with Yorkville predates that work and stressed there is no connection to Yorkville Ives or Yorkville Securities.
