Forget Nvidia: This Infrastructure Upstart Is The Real Backdoor AI Winner

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), the world's largest producer of data center GPUs, is the linchpin of the booming AI market. Most of the world's top AI companies use its GPUs to train their large language models (LLMs), and Nvidia locks in those clients with its proprietary software.

Nvidia still has a bright future, but it's already the world's largest company with a market cap of $4.7 trillion. So if you're looking for bigger gains, it might be smarter to seek out smaller, faster-growing AI companies that are still much smaller than Nvidia.

Image source: Getty Images.

One of those stocks is IREN (NASDAQ: IREN), which has rallied nearly 150% over the past 12 months and is worth about $14 billion. Let's see why this Australian AI infrastructure stock might outperform Nvidia and the other AI market leaders over the next 12 months.

What does IREN do?

IREN was originally a Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) miner called Iris Energy, which only used renewable energy in its mining operations. But in 2024, it rebranded itself as IREN and expanded into the AI infrastructure market by buying Nvidia's H100 and H200 GPUs.

In 2025, IREN allocated all of its capital, logistics, and power infrastructure toward expanding its AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers rather than its Bitcoin mining operations. Last November, it secured a 5-year, $9.7 billion AI cloud contract with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). This May, it signed a $3.4 billion contract for AI cloud services with Nvidia.

Those two mega-deals turned IREN into one of the market's hottest "neocloud" stocks, attracting massive interest from retail and institutional investors alike, including Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI-oriented Situational Awareness hedge fund. IREN continues to mine Bitcoin, but most of its growth now comes from its booming AI business.

What's next for IREN?

From fiscal 2025 (which ended last June) to fiscal 2028, analysts expect IREN's massive deals with Microsoft and Nvidia to boost its revenue from $510 million to $6.44 billion. They also expect its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to soar from $270 million in 2025 to $4.89 billion in 2028, with profitability by the final year.

With an enterprise value of $15.7 billion, IREN still looks like a bargain at seven and ten times next year's sales and adjusted EBITDA, respectively. Like other neocloud companies, IREN's valuations are being compressed by the near-term concerns regarding its spending. But over the long term, it could deliver multibagger gains as its AI infrastructure business expands. Its Bitcoin holdings could also become more valuable if the cryptocurrency market finally stabilizes.

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.