‘This Isn’t a Bubble’: Raymond James Says Load Up on These 2 Tech Stocks

The famous dot.com bubble burst 25 years ago, but its memory lives on, casting a shadow over the current bull market. Today’s bull is also fueled by tech – the AI boom that got up and running three years ago, when OpenAI introduced the world to ChatGPT and generative AI technology.

The market gains have been considerable. The tech-heavy NASDAQ index is up 104% over the past three years, and Nvidia, the global leader in AI-capable semiconductor chips, has become Wall Street’s most valuable company, with a market cap of $4.4 trillion.

Gains like this, however – their magnitude and speed – have sparked fears of another tech bubble. The naysayers are telling us that the burst is only a matter of time.

But that’s not the only view. Watching the situation from Raymond James, CIO Larry Adam believes that the dot.com analogy has been overdone, and that the current boom is not a bubble.

“While headlines often speculate about an AI bubble, we believe the long-term outlook for technology remains strong. Periodic volatility is a normal part of any innovation cycle and unlikely to derail our constructive view on equities. We remain positive on the technology sector – along with Industrials, which play a critical role in supporting data center expansion – given durability and transformative potential of the AI megatrend,” Adam noted.

The stock analysts at Raymond James are running with the bull thesis. In particular, they’re telling investors to load up on two tech stocks – each with its own idiosyncratic connection to the AI and cloud computing field. We ran this pair of Raymond James picks through the TipRanks database to find out what the rest of the Street has to say about them. Let’s take a closer look.

Confluent, Inc. (CFLT)

The first Raymond James pick on our radar is Confluent, a tech company founded in 2014 that today provides a complete data streaming platform (DSP), based on the capabilities and industry heritage of Apache Kafka and Apache Flink. Confluent’s DSP is designed to make sense of the mess that raw data can so frequently present. The company uses the analogy of a bowl of spaghetti – it’s enormously complex when it’s first served, but a fork and spoon together can turn it into a cleaner bite.

Confluent does that with data, using its DSP to develop a useful data stream that can be used in a variety of processes. The company notes that its DSP is especially useful in supporting real-time inventory systems for retailers; real-time fraud detection for banks; and real-time assembly-line diagnostics for industrial manufacturers. The common denominator in these disparate fields: a need to quickly and accurately turn large quantities of data into actionable insights.

Based on its success in data streaming, Confluent has built itself into a $7.3 billion leader in the field. The company notes that 70% of the Fortune 500 firms rely on data streaming for mission-critical purposes, and goes on to boast that its platform enables a 25% reduction in data management’s total cost of ownership – as well as a 5x return on investment due to accelerated data access and time to market.

Confluent has a solid base to take its successes forward. As of September 30 this year, the company reported having 2,533 customers with more than $20,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). This total included 1,487 customers with ARR of $100,000 or more. The 1,487 figure was up 10% year-over-year.

In 3Q25, Confluent reported a top line of $298.5 million, for a 19% year-over-year increase and beating the forecast by $5.63 million. At the other end of the equation, adj. EPS of $0.13 beat the analysts’ forecast by $0.03.

In the view of Raymond James analyst Mark Cash, this is a tech company with room to keep running. Cash wrote following the Q3 readout, “Cloud consumption strengthened across core Stream and DSP products as optimization pressures eased and new use cases accelerated. Our positive initiation thesis centered on Confluent’s ability to monetize functionality atop core streaming, driving diversification and durable growth. Cloud Flink nearing $10M (RJe) stems from a few large accounts, yet its 1,000+ paying customers can represent meaningful upside as AI and agentic workloads demand real-time pipelines and actionable data. Meanwhile, RPO rose 43% y/y, the fourth straight quarter of acceleration, underscoring Confluent’s strategic importance and improving visibility in a model that has had prediction challenges.”

All told, Cash rates CFLT as Outperform (i.e., Buy), and sets a $30 price target that indicates a potential upside of 42% in the year ahead. (To watch Cash’s track record, click here)

There are 26 recent analyst reviews on file for Confluent’s stock, and the breakdown – 19 Buys, 6 Holds, and 1 Sell – gives the shares a Moderate Buy consensus rating. The stock is currently priced at $21.06 and its average price target, $27.68, implies a one-year gain of 31%. (See CFLT stock forecast)

Lattice Semiconductor (LSCC)

The next stock on our list, Lattice Semiconductor, is one of the chip industry’s smaller companies, with a market cap of ~$9.4 billion and $509.4 million in annual revenue last year. While this is nowhere near Nvidia’s multi-trillion-dollar league, Lattice is still consistently profitable – and it has taken a leading role in a small, but vital, niche of the chip industry.

Lattice specializes in the design, production, and distribution of low-power or power-efficient field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). These are a vital piece of semiconductor technology; they have a built-in flexibility that allows them to be programmed and re-programmed multiple times, a feature that makes them highly adaptable to the ever-changing needs of today’s tech environments. FPGA chips have found use in numerous hot-button applications, including AI, edge computing, factory automation and robotics, 5G, and system security. Among more traditional industries, these chips are used in communications applications and automotive technology.

Lattice produces several lines of FPGA products, from generalized chips to items specialized for video connections or ultra-low-power uses. The company backs up its chip products with an array of additional tools and services, from software tools to training demos to power managers.

This chip company generated $133.35 million in revenue during Q3, a figure that was up 5% year-over-year, and 7.6% quarter-over-quarter. The Q3 top line was also $341,000 better than had been expected.

At the bottom line, Lattice reported a non-GAAP EPS of 28 cents. This was up 4 cents per share from the prior-year quarter, and matched the analysts’ expectations.

Srini Pajjuri, who ranks among the top 3% of Street stock experts, covers this chip company for Raymond James, and his upbeat stance is based on the company’s recent record of success and clear prospects for continued gains. The 5-star analyst writes, “LSCC continues to benefit from public cloud infrastructure upgrades, with expanding FPGA penetration and content gains across both general-purpose and AI server deployments. Meanwhile, contributions from the Industrial & Automotive (I&A) segment declined year over year for the seventh consecutive quarter, as expected, with management reaffirming that channel inventory should normalize by year-end – generally consistent with broader market trends. We remain constructive on LSCC’s positioning to capture AI-driven server and networking demand, supported by ongoing new product ramps, while a cyclical recovery in I&A markets should begin contributing to incremental growth upside in 2026 and beyond.”

Quantifying his stance, Pajjuri gives LSCC an Outperform (i.e., Buy) rating, along with an $80 price target that suggests a 17% upside on the one-year horizon. (To watch Pajjuri’s track record, click here)

Overall, LSCC shares have a Moderate Buy consensus rating from the Wall Street analysts, a rating derived from 11 reviews that include 9 Buys, and 1 Hold and Sell, each. The stock is trading for $68.47 and has an average target price of $79.40, implying a gain in the next 12 months of 16%. (See LSCC stock forecast)

To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analyst. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.