Is Iren Stock a Buy Now?

Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) is growing and creating massive opportunities for companies with the compute capacity to run training and inference workloads.

Iren (NASDAQ: IREN) has traditionally used its compute capacity to mine Bitcoin, but the company has pivoted from cryptocurrency mining to providing cloud services to help technology companies manage workloads.

Iren is winding down its Bitcoin operations by the end of this year and leaning fully into managing AI workloads. With the stock trading down about 37% from its 52-week high, is now a good time to buy? Let's dive into the business and opportunity ahead to find out.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Iren's pivot into providing AI cloud compute

For years, Iren focused on mining Bitcoin using ASIC (custom integrated circuit chips built for a specific task rather than general computing) hardware. However, the company is undergoing a massive strategic shift, redirecting its computing infrastructure toward AI cloud services.

This shift has had a couple of impacts on Iren. For one, the company has recorded massive losses relating to this transition. For its fiscal year 2026 (ending June 30), Iren recorded a net loss of $702.6 million, a massive increase from its net profit of $86.9 million the year before. A major reason for this loss was a $638.8 million noncash asset impairment charge for decommissioning and writing down its mining hardware.

On the flip side, Iren's AI cloud services revenue has surged. In 2026, the company's cloud revenue reached $128.8 million, up from $16.4 million the year before. As part of its pivot, the company's workforce nearly tripled during the year, and it has brought in C-suite leaders from technology giants like Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, and Alphabet's Google.

Iren has secured major deals

Iren's pivot is well underway. In November 2025, the company signed a $9.7 billion cloud services deal with Microsoft. As part of the deal, Iren will provide large-scale GPU clusters to handle 200 megawatts (MW) of critical IT load at its Childress, Texas, campus. Iren expects the five-year deal to deliver roughly $1.94 billion in annualized run rate revenue when fully commissioned.

In addition, Iren has contracts with other AI companies, including Perplexity, Cohere, Together AI, Fal AI, Higgsfield AI, and Prometheus.

Is Iren a buy?

Iren has made an important pivot toward AI cloud services, which should drive more growth than its previous Bitcoin mining operations.

As part of this pivot, the company is incurring massive costs, including projected capital expenditures of $25 billion to $30 billion in 2027 as it upgrades and expands its data center hubs to support powerful Nvidia chips. The company is using debt and customer pre-payments, which fund about half of its GPU capital expenditures up front on recent deals.

For conservative investors seeking capital preservation or dividends, Iren is a stock to avoid. However, for growth-focused investors looking to play the booming demand for compute from AI hyperscalers, Iren is a solid stock to capitalize on this trend.

Courtney Carlsen has positions in Alphabet, Bitcoin, Iren, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Bitcoin, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.