Wedbush Revises AI 30 Roster: SK Hynix and Datadog Added, Alibaba and Shopify Removed

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As the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution deepens and capital expenditures from tech giants continue to rise, the prominent Wall Street investment bank Wedbush has recently conducted a new round of adjustments to its closely watched AI 30 winners list. In this update, the enterprise software company Datadog (DDOG.US) and the South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix have been added to the list, while Alibaba (BABA.US) and Shopify (SHOP.US) have been removed.

SK Hynix: An "Unprecedented Memory Supercycle" in Full Swing The Wedbush analyst team noted in a report to clients that one of the strongest themes emerging from recent field research and the first-quarter earnings season is that an "unprecedented memory supercycle" is now in full swing. The report stated that AI infrastructure demand for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), DRAM, and NAND has reached unprecedented levels. As major hyperscale cloud providers race to expand computing capacity, the storage requirements for AI workloads far exceed those of traditional cloud workloads. In this context, memory manufacturers are experiencing their strongest pricing power in the past decade, with significant upward inflection points for DRAM and NAND prices anticipated in the second half of 2026. Wedbush believes SK Hynix is a core beneficiary of this memory supercycle and one of the most important AI investment opportunities in the current market, asserting that "Wall Street continues to severely underestimate the duration and magnitude of this cycle." As the world's largest HBM supplier, SK Hynix's performance is surging at a remarkable pace driven by AI storage demand. The company's financial data for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 shows quarterly revenue surpassing the 50 trillion won mark for the first time, reaching 52.58 trillion won. Operating profit soared to 37.61 trillion won, a 405% year-over-year increase. The operating profit margin skyrocketed to 72%, and the net profit margin reached 77%, both setting record highs since the company's founding. The company's HBM supply is completely sold out, with all DRAM, HBM, and NAND capacity for 2026 already locked in by long-term customer contracts. The CFO confirmed back in October 2025 that HBM supply for 2026 was fully sold out, and management later warned that supply shortages could extend into 2027. In the 2026 HBM market, SK Hynix is projected to hold approximately a 52% shipment market share. Based on sales, HBM revenue is expected to reach $5.95 billion, solidifying its position as the global leader. Wedbush stated that SK Hynix, alongside Micron Technology (MU.US), is among the "most direct beneficiaries" of the hyperscale cloud provider capital expenditure wave and a core winner in the AI revolution. This assessment is set against a macroeconomic backdrop where Google (GOOGL.US), Amazon (AMZN.US), Microsoft (MSFT.US), and Meta (META.US) plan to collectively invest $725 billion in AI during 2026. Micron has previously estimated that the total addressable market for HBM will grow from $35 billion in 2025 to $100 billion by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of approximately 40%.

Datadog: An Indirect Beneficiary of the AI Revolution Unlike SK Hynix, which represents the AI infrastructure layer, Datadog has been included as an indirect beneficiary of the AI revolution. Wedbush pointed out that Datadog stands out in meeting enterprise demand for monitoring, securing, and optimizing AI workloads. As AI and cloud workloads continue to expand, the company is increasingly well-positioned to capture this multi-year industry transformation opportunity. Datadog has been active in the AI observability space. In March 2026, it officially launched the MCP Server, integrating real-time observability data into AI coding agents to help teams perform production environment debugging directly within tools like Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor. That same month, it also released the AI Security Analyst feature for Cloud SIEM, capable of compressing security investigations that traditionally took hours down to under 30 seconds, reducing mean time to resolution by over 90%. In April, it announced the launch of its GPU Monitoring product, providing enterprises with unified visibility across the AI stack to help optimize GPU spending and accelerate AI project delivery. Financially, Datadog's latest quarterly earnings report showed revenue reaching $1.01 billion, a 32.1% year-over-year increase, surpassing market expectations of $960 million. Earnings per share were $0.60, also exceeding the expected $0.51. Several Wall Street firms have recently raised their price targets for the stock. Oppenheimer increased its target from $200 to $220, RBC raised its target from $161 to $219 with an "Outperform" rating, and Evercore set a price target of $225.

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