Bitcoin miner IREN Limited’s stock (NASDAQ: IREN) blasted higher today as investors priced in the company’s pivot from pure-play bitcoin miner to an integrated AI-cloud operator.
The stock jumped into double-digit gains after two separate analyst calls put fresh conviction behind the company’s strategy, and after IREN announced a massive GPU procurement that materially changes its revenue runway.
IREN has surged 110% in the past month to $48.75, including a 16.6% jump today, and is now up more than 530% over the last six months.
Why is IREN surging?
The headline drivers are straightforward: IREN says it has doubled its AI Cloud capacity to roughly 23,000 GPUs after a ~$674 million purchase of 12,400 units — a mix of NVIDIA B300s and B200s plus AMD MI350Xs — and is guiding the segment toward more than $500 million in annualized run-rate revenue by Q1 2026. Those numbers convert a theoretical “AI pivot” into a tangible capacity and revenue target investors can value.
Wall Street reacted fast. Bernstein more than tripled its target to $75 and framed the move as a “breakout” driven by exponential AI cloud scaling, implying roughly 80% upside from the prior close, according to CoinDesk.
Around the same time Arete Research initiated coverage with a Buy and a $78 target, echoing the view that the company’s combined data-center and mining footprint gives it a unique claim in the market.
The analyst calls — from two shops with materially different frameworks — pushed the stock into the top gainers on crypto-infrastructure screens.
IREN management has been explicit about building out liquid-cooled, high-density AI halls (including a planned 75MW direct-to-chip AI site in Texas) and pairing that physical capacity with the company’s existing low-cost power portfolio.
Owning power, land and data centers lets IREN capture a larger slice of per-megawatt economics than miners that merely lease capacity to hyperscalers.
That vertical control is central to Bernstein’s re-rating thesis.
The market’s bid also reflects a partial offset: IREN isn’t abandoning bitcoin. The company still operates one of the largest self-run mining fleets in the U.S., and analysts point to the miner’s sizable bitcoin cash flow — roughly hundreds of millions in EBITDA at current prices — as a funding source for the AI capex.
That optionality — toggle between mining and GPU hosting depending on which yields more per megawatt — is central to investors’ willingness to assign a premium multiple to IREN’s new AI assets.
