NEW YORK, Jan 2, 2026, 08:08 ET
- Institutional investors have built or increased positions in IREN as it pivots from bitcoin mining to AI cloud services, a report said.
- The shift is tied to IREN’s $9.7 billion, five-year AI cloud contract with Microsoft, which requires new Texas data center capacity.
- Goldman Sachs has initiated coverage with a Neutral rating and a $39 price target, Yahoo Finance reported.
Institutional investors have been building positions in IREN Ltd as the Nasdaq-listed data centre operator pushes deeper into artificial intelligence cloud services, a report said on Friday. Shares were down about 1.3% at $37.77 in premarket trading. 1
The buying matters because demand for power and data centre capacity to run AI workloads has tightened, lifting interest in companies that can deliver new infrastructure quickly.
For IREN, the shift comes with execution pressure. The company still generates most of its revenue from cryptocurrency mining, and its AI plans depend on bringing new facilities online on schedule.
IREN has a five-year AI cloud services contract with Microsoft valued at about $9.7 billion, the report said. The deal calls for 200 megawatts of “critical IT load,” meaning the power used by servers, at IREN’s Childress, Texas campus.
The project is designed around Nvidia’s GB300 graphics processing units, or GPUs — specialized chips used to train and run AI models. The Childress “Horizon 1–4” facilities are planned as liquid-cooled, Tier 3-equivalent data centres, a high-availability standard intended to allow maintenance without taking systems offline, the report said.
Calamos Advisors initiated a new position of about 90,000 shares, while Hood River Capital Management built a stake valued at about $74 million, the report said. Situational Awareness and Invesco also increased their holdings, it said.
Invesco raised its total stake to nearly 3 million shares after lifting its position by about 46%, the report said. Situational Awareness increased its holding by about 47%, it said.
IREN reported quarterly revenue of $240.3 million and adjusted EBITDA of $91.7 million for the three months ended Sept. 30, according to the report. Adjusted EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, stripped of certain items companies consider non-recurring.
Management is targeting the energization of its “Sweetwater 1” site in April 2026, part of a planned 1,400-megawatt hub in Texas, the report said. The company is expected to provide further construction and deployment updates with its next quarterly results in February, it said.
Goldman Sachs initiated coverage with a Neutral rating and a $39 price target in December, Yahoo Finance reported. 2
IREN’s shares have rallied sharply alongside other “neo-cloud” names — smaller cloud providers focused on GPU computing — such as CoreWeave and Nebius, TipRanks said.
H.C. Wainwright analyst Mike Colonnese said there are “quite high” execution and financial risks around the Microsoft deal, TipRanks reported. 3
The broader analyst consensus remains more constructive, with eight Buy ratings, two Holds and two Sells, and an average price target of about $80, the report said.
