IREN Stock Skyrockets 500% as Bitcoin Miner Reinvents Itself as AI Cloud Powerhouse
Business Model & Industry IREN began as Iris Energy, a clean-energy Bitcoin miner, and has pivoted sharply into data centers for AI/HPC workloads. Its model is vertically integrated: it owns land, power contracts, and facilities (Canada, Texas) all run on 100% renewable hydro and wind power ts2.tech. This “green” setup gave IREN some of the lowest mining costs in the industry (around $0.03–$0.038 per kWh) ts2.tech ts2.tech. By mid-2024 it had ~20 EH/s of hashpower, making it a top-tier miner. Starting in 2024, management began aggressively re-purposing idle capacity to AI computing ts2.tech. In August 2025 it became an Nvidia “Preferred