SpaceX Earns Street-High Target, Salesforce Downgraded in Flurry of AI-Related Analyst Calls

A series of significant analyst ratings this week highlighted diverging Wall Street views on key players in the artificial intelligence landscape, led by a highly bullish initiation on SpaceX and a cautious downgrade of Salesforce.

Bullish Calls on SpaceX and Alibaba

Raymond James initiated coverage of SpaceX with a Strong Buy rating and a Street-high price target of $800. Analyst Brian Gesuale argued that the convergence of industrialized space access and AI represents "the most significant infrastructure convergence since the advent of the Internet." The firm's thesis centers on Starship, which it says will reduce the cost of orbital transport by over 99%, creating a total addressable market approaching $30 trillion.

Raymond James projects SpaceX's revenue will grow from approximately $38.5 billion today to over $837 billion by 2031. The price target is based on a discounted cash flow analysis of the firm's 2031 EBITDA estimates.

Meanwhile, Bank of America reiterated its Buy rating on Alibaba with a $172 price objective, calling it "one of the most compelling AI plays in China." Analysts expect AI-driven demand to accelerate the company's cloud revenue growth to 45% year-over-year in the June quarter, helping to offset softness in its core e-commerce business.

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Diverging Views on Software and Semis

In the software sector, Salesforce was downgraded to Sector Weight from Outperform by Bernstein. Analyst Jackson Ader cited weak customer feedback on the company's Agentforce AI product, noting that clients feel their data is not organized enough for AI and that the product itself "just isn’t there." A recent CIO survey also indicated that more IT departments expect to deprioritize Salesforce spending over the next year.

Conversely, Shopify received an upgrade to Buy from Stifel, which raised its price target to $150 from $110. Analyst J. Parker Lane cited the stock's recent decline as an attractive entry point, forecasting a "realistic path to 30%-plus revenue growth in 2026" as the company gains market share and develops its "agentic commerce playbook."

In semiconductors, Mizuho TMT specialist Jordan Klein called the recent investor sell-off in Samsung an "overreaction" to its preliminary Q2 results. Klein argued that the revenue miss was driven by mobile devices and TVs, not the critical memory business, which he believes maintains strong fundamentals and operating margins of over 80%. He suggested the market should focus on the upcoming results from TSMC and ASML for a better gauge of the sector's health.