New York, January 26, 2026, 19:02 (EST) — After-hours trading
- IREN dropped 7.6% to $52.36 following a choppy session marked by heavy volume
- Nvidia’s $2 billion stake in CoreWeave intensified the focus on the AI data-center race
- Investors will focus on the Fed decision midweek and IREN’s quarterly results due Feb. 5
Shares of IREN Limited (Nasdaq: IREN) dropped 7.6% Monday, closing near $52.36 in after-hours. The stock swung between $51.80 and $57.09, with roughly 42 million shares changing hands.
The pullback came as Nvidia funneled more cash into CoreWeave, a rapidly expanding cloud infrastructure player, while promoting a longer-term push for “AI factories”—massive data centers built to handle AI workloads. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator described the deepened partnership as a sign of “strong demand across our customer base.” 1
Timing is tricky. Investors are bracing for a Federal Reserve meeting kicking off Tuesday, wrapping up with a policy announcement Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, a handful of mega-cap firms will unveil earnings later this week, facing scrutiny over what their AI investments are actually delivering. “It seems like we’re having an expansion in corporate profits and an expansion in the economy,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management. 2
Bitcoin climbed roughly 1.9% to around $88,233 but provided scant support to crypto-linked stocks, which remain volatile amid changing outlooks on funding costs and growth.
IREN finds itself caught in the middle of this debate. The company sells graphics processing units (GPUs) — the chips behind AI model training — via large-scale clusters, claiming to serve both AI training and “inference,” which involves the routine operation of trained models.
IREN announced it will release its results for the quarter ended Dec. 31 on Feb. 5, followed by a conference call at 5 p.m. ET. The company also identified itself as an AI cloud service provider operating grid-connected land and data centers located in renewable-rich areas throughout the U.S. and Canada. 3
Investors are focused on that call—they want updates on capacity expansion, customer demand, and how quickly spending must ramp up in an industry rapidly running short on power, space, and time.
The peer group is a bit tangled for traders. Bitcoin miners like Riot Platforms, Marathon Digital, and CleanSpark have all highlighted AI hosting alongside their mining operations. When AI stocks catch a bid—or sell off—the market usually moves these names in tandem.
There’s a clear risk here: these projects require heavy capital, and the competitive standards just keep climbing. If customer commitments slow down, power comes online later than expected, or financing tightens, the impact can hit fast—even with bitcoin holding steady.
Feb. 5 is the next major date to watch. Until then, the Fed’s move and earnings reports from the biggest AI investors should keep stocks linked to data-center expansion, like IREN, on edge.
