Dan Ives Bets His Tech Brand on a Merchant Bank

Dan Ives left Wedbush Securities on July 1, 2026, and two weeks later put his name on a merchant bank built with Yorkville Securities. The new shop, Yorkville Ives and Co., says it will pair his tech research following with principal capital, deal advice, and trading.

He is betting the brand that lived on television can sell a balance-sheet product. Wedbush is still running funds with his name on the ticker while he builds the next firm.

Yorkville Ives Puts Research Next to Principal Capital

Ives spent eight years at Wedbush as managing director and global head of technology research. The Pasadena firm said he had departed the firm on July 1 to establish a new investment banking venture. Gary Wedbush, president and CEO, called it a natural entrepreneurial step and said he looked forward to future partnerships.

On July 15, Yorkville Securities and Ives said they would form Yorkville Ives and Co. Ives is partner and senior managing director. Roger Briggs, a former Salomon Brothers mergers banker who later ran investment banking at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and corporate finance for Rabobank in North America, is chief executive officer.

The firm’s own site describes two pillars: Yorkville’s record investing principal and partner capital, and Ives’s technology and AI research following. Headquarters is listed at 1012 Springfield Avenue in Mountainside, New Jersey. Ives said he would be based in the New York area. The shop is affiliated with Yorkville Advisors Global, LP, an SEC-registered adviser to a family of funds.

WHAT YORKVILLE IVES SAYS IT WILL SELL

• Capital raising: Debt and equity across public and private markets.
• Aligned capital: Principal investing alongside clients and partners, which the firm treats as the difference between a merchant bank and a conventional adviser.
• Advisory: Mergers, capital structure, restructuring, and other complex deals for boards, owners, and sponsors.
• Research: Independent equity work across technology, AI, industrials, energy, and infrastructure.
• Trading: Institutional execution sitting next to the advice and the capital.

Ives has covered technology for more than 25 years, including 16 years at FBR Capital Markets after a finance stint at HBO. His Wedbush tenure ran from August 2018 until July 2026. The Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia calls are the track record he is now trying to turn into fees, capital, and a firm that keeps his name after the chyron changes.

The Partner Comes With a Senate Letter

Yorkville is not a blank sheet. Troy Rillo, listed as a founder and partner of Yorkville Ives, is also a partner at Yorkville Advisors Global and chairman of Yorkville America, which the site says runs branded ETFs and separately managed accounts. He is described as CEO or CFO of several Yorkville Advisors special purpose acquisition companies.

On June 25, 2026, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden opened an inquiry into Yorkville International Capital, a blank-check company that raised $200 million for investments in Venezuela and Latin America. Wyden wrote to Mark Angelo, president of Yorkville Advisors Global, that Yorkville Advisors and people involved with the SPAC have deep business ties to Donald Trump and the Trump family. The letter also said the blank-check company shares a chief executive with Trump Media and Technology Group.

Those facts attach to the Yorkville group Ives joined, not to a disclosed Yorkville Ives mandate in Caracas. The launch release still has to live next to that letter. Ives said he looked for partners with Wall Street experience, a proven investing track record, great people, and the ability to move quickly. Yorkville, he said, brought exactly that.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The affiliation: Yorkville Ives and Co. is affiliated with Yorkville Advisors Global, LP, and offers securities through a FINRA and SIPC member broker-dealer at the Mountainside address.
• The personnel overlap: Rillo sits at the new bank and at the adviser that sponsors Yorkville SPACs and branded funds.
• The Senate file: Wyden’s June 25 letter targets Yorkville International Capital and Yorkville Advisors Global over Trump-family ties and a $200 million Venezuela-and-Latin-America SPAC.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Any Ives-bank role in that SPAC: No public filing reviewed for this article places Yorkville Ives as adviser or investor on the Venezuela vehicle.
• Closed deals: The July 15 announcement listed products, not completed transactions in Ives’s name.

Briggs’s pitch is that the firms that last will invest alongside clients rather than only advise them. That is a real product difference if the capital shows up. It is also how a research celebrity inherits a partner’s political file without putting it in the press release.

Wedbush Still Sells Funds With His Name

Wedbush Fund Advisers said it would keep managing the IVES and IVEP ETFs without interruption. The Dan IVES Wedbush AI Revolution ETF began on June 3, 2025, and tracks an index built from names in Ives’s AI 30 research report. Data compiled by YCharts on September 13, 2026, listed IVES assets of $1.053 billion, a 0.75 percent net expense ratio, and $292.17 million in one-year fund-level flows.

THE IVES-NAMED FUNDS WEDBUSH STILL RUNS

IVEP is the smaller, later product, aimed at power and infrastructure names around the same AI buildout. The prospectus language on IVES, as summarized in later fund analysis, did not carry a key-person clause that would force a shutdown if Ives left. Wedbush’s July 1 statement said the firm “understands” continuity for clients; it did not say Ives would keep writing the AI 30 list from the new bank.

Around September 1, Wedbush Funds filed paperwork for a Dan Ives Wedbush 2x Daily AI Revolution ETF. The old employer is still turning the name into product after the analyst walked out. That is a clean split of the wager: Ives wants a merchant bank, and Wedbush wants the ticker that retail already recognizes.

Eightco Was the Dress Rehearsal

Before the bank, Ives tried a public-company chair. Eightco Holdings named him chairman on September 11, 2025, and he used the seat as a platform for a Worldcoin treasury story and an authentication product the company branded Infinity. A company year-end chairman’s message dated December 31, 2025, said Eightco held 277,222,975 WLD tokens, 11,068 ETH, and about $69.2 million in cash and stablecoins, and claimed more than 10 percent of WLD then in circulation.

On March 10, 2026, Ives told the board he was resigning as director and chairman, effective the same day. The company said the resignation was not the result of a disagreement on operations, policies, or practices. CEO Kevin O’Donnell took the chair. Thomas Lee joined as an independent director the same day, as Eightco announced $125 million in new funding commitments.

He also sits on the advisory board of Zeta Global, a marketing-technology company, a side role he kept while still publishing stock research. The pattern is the same one the merchant bank now formalizes: the analyst as a capital-markets brand that can sit on boards, name funds, and raise a following that outruns a mid-size research department.

FINRA Still Has to Clear the Research Desk

The product Ives is most famous for is the note. The launch release put a caveat under that product. Subject to pending regulatory approval, Yorkville Ives had filed a Continuing Membership Application with FINRA seeking approval to expand into the research line of business, and it expected to launch that line in the same quarter if the regulator signed off.

The fourth industrial revolution is here, and it needs a new kind of bank, a modern merchant bank. Research, banking, trading, and capital, all under one hood, all pointed at the biggest transformation the markets have ever seen.

Dan Ives, Partner and Senior Managing Director, Yorkville Ives launch statement

Kevin Merritt is director of research. The firm says he spent more than 25 years on the sell side and the buy side, including more than 10 years as a director of research, and that he led a team of 50-plus analysts and associates at Wedbush and co-led a much larger group at Aptigon Capital inside Citadel. Hiring the person who used to run Wedbush’s research management is how you staff a franchise before the membership application clears.

Until that line is live as a regulated product, the public output is the same one Ives already knew how to make: television, a social account, and a thesis that hyperscalers cannot stop spending. The merchant-bank claim is that those opinions will sit on top of capital that can take the other side of a deal. The FINRA footnote is the part of the bet that is not a metaphor.

Who Covers Tech at Wedbush Now?

Wedbush did not name a single successor to Ives’s global tech-research title. Seth Basham, director of equity research, said the firm saw a chance to build on a long-standing technology team. Twenty days after Ives left, the firm said Ygal Arounian had rejoined as internet research head.

Arounian had most recently been director of internet equity research at Citi. He covered internet stocks at Wedbush from 2018 to 2022, overlapping Ives’s first years there, and spent more than six years at BMO Capital Markets on media and internet. The firm said he initiated coverage on 21 companies across seven internet groups, including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Uber, DoorDash, Shopify, and Duolingo.

That hire rebuilds a slice of the internet book. It does not automatically replace a personality who treated Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, and SpaceX as a single running commentary. Ives’s last major Wedbush call, posted by the firm on June 30, initiated SpaceX at Outperform with a $190 price target, the day before he told the partnership he was leaving.

Wedbush, founded in 1955, still has the clearing, wealth, and banking machine. It also has nearly 900 colleagues and about 100 registered offices, per the Arounian announcement. What it no longer has is the person whose jackets were the firm’s unpaid advertising.

The TV Brand Moved With Him

Ives announced the bank on his own account the morning of July 15, from the same emoji register he used as a sell-side analyst.

I am excited to announce that this morning we are launching the new modern merchant bank, Yorkville Ives. This is the next step for me in my Wall Street career and look forward to speaking soon. I will be based in NYC area. 🏆💥👇https://t.co/gAQF0tjSPQ

— Dan Ives (@DivesTech) July 15, 2026

The replies that matter on that thread were congratulations from other market-television regulars, not a markup of Yorkville’s Senate mail. Months later the public Ives is still the public Ives. He is introduced as a partner at Yorkville Ives and Co., then asked about Apple’s AI software, iPhone prices, and whether Big Tech spending is late. The merchant bank has been quieter than the guest chair.

He has said the clothes did distribution work the models never could. People who skipped the notes still knew the shirts. That is useful if you are selling a research brand into living rooms. It is a stranger fit if you are asking a board to let you commit principal, structure a capital raise, and stay in the deal after the close, which is the job Briggs described.

Wedbush is still filing funds that lean on the surname. Ives is still making the AI-bull case with a New Jersey broker-dealer behind the new title. The wager is whether that title starts to look like a bank, or whether it stays a chyron with a longer name.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis for general information only. It is not investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell any security, or a recommendation of Yorkville Ives and Co., Wedbush Securities, the IVES or IVEP funds, Eightco Holdings, or any other company named here. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser, broker, or other qualified professional who can review their own objectives and risk limits before making any investment or career decision tied to these firms. Assets, fees, regulatory filings, and job statuses are those published by the cited companies and data services on the dates given in the story and can change.