New York, Jan 8, 2026, 12:58 EST — Regular session
- IREN shares rose about 6% in midday trading, outpacing a mixed Nasdaq tape.
- Bitcoin miners broadly gained as bitcoin hovered near $91,000.
- Traders are watching Friday’s U.S. jobs report and the next earnings window in mid-February.
IREN Limited (NASDAQ: IREN) shares were up about 6.3% at $46.38 in midday trading on Thursday, after swinging between $42.69 and $47.57 earlier in the session.
The move matters because IREN has become a fast, levered way to trade two themes at once: bitcoin-linked cash flows and demand for AI data center capacity. This week’s CES headlines have kept the AI side in play, while macro data on Friday could swing risk appetite across the tape. 1
Bitcoin was little changed around $91,000, but U.S.-listed miners were mostly higher. Marathon Digital rose about 4.6%, Cipher Mining gained roughly 3.2% and CleanSpark added about 2.3%, while Riot Platforms was up less than 1%.
At CES in Las Vegas, chip and software groups have leaned hard into “physical AI” — using AI to power machines and robots — widening the conversation beyond chatbots and data centers. “The real spend … is when they combine the machining with the level of AI,” C.J. Finn, PwC’s U.S. automotive industry leader, told Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/arm-launches-physical-ai-division-expand-robotics-market-2026-01-07/
IREN, an Australia-based operator of renewable-powered data centers, runs sites geared to bitcoin mining and other power-dense computing. It also has pushed into AI cloud services — essentially renting graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train and run AI models — and last year disclosed a $9.7 billion, five-year AI cloud contract with Microsoft. https://www.reuters.com/markets/companies/IREN.O https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-signs-97-billion-contract-with-iren-nvidia-chips-2025-11-03/
A Zacks note published on Wednesday flagged how expensive the stock looks on a simple revenue multiple, with IREN trading at about 24 times trailing sales. Price-to-sales compares a company’s market value to its revenue, and the note also pointed to heavy spending needs as IREN scales AI capacity. 2
Technically, Thursday’s rebound still leaves the stock well below its 52-week high of $76.87, and far above its 52-week low of $5.13. The day’s range — roughly $42.55 to $47.58 — underlined how quickly positioning can flip in this corner of the market. 3
The broader backdrop was uneven. The Nasdaq was down around half a percent near midday as heavyweight tech names slid, and investors turned to Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payrolls report for the next macro cue. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-stock-futures-dip-defense-firms-climb-up-trump-budget-plans-2026-01-08/
But the downside case is easy to sketch. A sharp bitcoin drop can squeeze miner margins fast, and any wobble in AI infrastructure spending — or delays in power hookups, construction, or GPU deliveries — can hit companies trying to build out large data center footprints. Funding risk is never far away in capital-heavy businesses.
Next up, traders will be watching whether bitcoin holds its early-January range into the close and how Friday’s payrolls data lands. For IREN specifically, Wall Street calendars peg its next earnings release in mid-February, with Zacks expecting Feb. 11. 4
