IREN Stock Rebounds as Microsoft AI Deal Fuels Bull Calls, but $6 Billion Share Sale Risk Lingers

IREN Stock Rebounds as Microsoft AI Deal Fuels Bull Calls, but $6 Billion Share Sale Risk Lingers

NEW YORK, April 15, 2026, 11:05 EDT

IREN stock leveled out Wednesday, recovering ground since dipping in late March. Shares traded at $47.43, up 0.1%, as of 10:48 a.m. EDT on Nasdaq. That puts IREN’s market cap near $10.7 billion.

Investors are trying to figure out if IREN will be able to translate last year’s $9.7 billion Microsoft cloud deal into meaningful AI revenue soon enough to make its aggressive hardware spending pay off. That question feels more urgent with CoreWeave and Nebius both announcing new, hefty AI capacity agreements—raising the bar for everyone in the space.

IREN announced March 4 it had lined up a deal for over 50,000 Nvidia B300 GPUs—the chips powering AI training and inference—bringing its targeted fleet size to 150,000 units. According to the company, this expanded build-out positions IREN for over $3.7 billion in annualized AI cloud revenue by the close of 2026. Co-CEO Daniel Roberts pointed out that locking in supply early “reduces time-to-compute.”

The numbers tell the story of a company still finding its footing. For the quarter ending Dec. 31, total revenue slid to $184.7 million, down from $240.3 million in the previous quarter. Bitcoin mining revenue took the brunt of the fall, dropping to $167.4 million from $233.0 million. On the flip side, AI cloud services revenue surged, more than doubling to $17.3 million from $7.3 million. Roberts described it as the “strongest demand environment” the company has experienced. IREN

Management hasn’t dodged the funding issue. IREN said it locked in $3.6 billion of GPU financing for the Microsoft deal, with interest coming in under 6%. Add Microsoft’s $1.9 billion prepayment to that, and the company says 95% of its GPU capital costs are covered. As of Jan. 31, cash stood at $2.8 billion. The annual recurring revenue target stays at $3.4 billion by the end of 2026, but filings note that some of that ARR relies on internal assumptions—not every dollar is contracted yet.

Peer deal activity picked up pace. Just last week, CoreWeave tacked an extra $21 billion onto its Meta contract, then turned around and landed a separate cloud agreement with Anthropic. By Wednesday, the company announced Jane Street had inked a $6 billion deal and put $1 billion into CoreWeave equity. Nebius, another outfit in the AI cloud space, said back in March that Meta contracts might total $27 billion over a five-year stretch.

Still, there’s support for IREN’s positioning from some corners. Brett Knoblauch at Cantor Fitzgerald dropped his price target to $61 from $82 on April 9, though he maintained an Overweight call, pointing to AI infrastructure as “an attractive place to invest.” Over at H.C. Wainwright, Mike Colonnese stuck with his $80 target following IREN’s March GPU order, calling it “an important step forward” and evidence that “customer demand is strong enough.” Both targets are well above Wednesday’s $47.43 close. TipRanks

The risks stack up. Back in March, an SEC prospectus revealed IREN might tap the market for as much as $6 billion more through an at-the-market offering—this after pulling in roughly $1 billion on the previous facility. The filing pointed out the obvious: more stock sales mean dilution for current holders. Reuters has already flagged that Microsoft could walk away from the contract if IREN fails to hit its delivery deadlines.

Leverage has climbed as the company expanded. As of Dec. 31, IREN reported $3.69 billion in convertible notes payable on its balance sheet. Much of the imminent AI growth is still closely linked to Microsoft and relies on new capacity launching in Childress, Texas, and Prince George, British Columbia. The next few quarters, then, boil down to this: will the contracted AI demand materialize in sales figures?

Khadija Saeed is a financial markets reporter at TS2.tech, specializing in stocks, technology and emerging industries. She studied economics and finance at the London School of Economics and previously worked in market research before moving into financial journalism. Her coverage focuses on the companies, innovations and economic trends influencing global investors. Follow Khadija Saeed on Google News.

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