Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives argues that Big Tech is in a sentiment "penalty box" even as the multi‑year AI build‑out enters a critical acceleration phase, creating a prime entry point into core AI winners. Ives frames the current pullback as a "gut check" stretch for tech investors heading into a pivotal earnings season, with the market wrestling with "worries around the costs of this once-in-a-generation tech buildout." Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR), Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are driving the trend but under massive selling pressure. Ives describes Microsoft and Meta as being "treated by investors like they are bear market names that cannot be owned." He argues the core issue is timing, not fundamentals, as roughly $700 billion of capex this year funds AI datacenter and compute buildouts, but monetization is still six to 12 months away. A second source of anxiety is rising compute and memory costs, sharpened by Apple’s recent price increases, sparking "a negative jolt." Wedbush sees costs moderating over the coming year as AI consumer hardware, physical deployments, and enterprise use cases "explode at scale."