The artificial intelligence (AI) era is hitting its second stage, benefiting software and cloud providers, Wedbush analysts say. Wedbush managing director of equity research Scott Devitt joins Seana Smith and Brad Smith on Morning Brief to discuss the firm's expectations for the next stage of AI and which companies are positioned to gain.

Devitt outlines the three stages of the AI era as Wedbush sees it. "The first part of the cycle, which was the semiconductors, making significant amounts of money as the cloud companies change their architecture to be able to perform in an AI world."

The second stage is "the application phase of the cycle, which should benefit software companies as well as the cloud providers. And then, phase three of this will ultimately be the consumer-facing companies figuring out how to use the technology in ways that actually can drive increased interactions with consumers."

The analyst says the market will enter phase two in 2025, with software companies and cloud provider stocks expected to see gains. He adds that cybersecurity companies could also benefit as the technology evolves.

Wedbush highlights Salesforce (CRM), Elastic (ESTC), Snowflake (SNOW), and Palantir (PLTR) as software names posed to gain as well as Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) in the cloud hyperscaler space.

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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.