Shares of Bitcoin (BTC +1.12%) miner-turned-AI-neocloud IREN Limited (IREN +8.97%) skyrocketed 284.6% in 2025, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
To start 2025, IREN was regarded as a small Bitcoin miner. However, after IREN began building its AI neocloud platform at the end of 2024, the company secured its first major AI cloud customers in the second half of 2025.
As investors realized one of the big constraints on the AI buildout was not semiconductors but power availability, IREN's massive 2.91 gigawatts of grid-connected, renewable-sourced power and land was soon appreciated as a scarce asset.
NASDAQ: IREN
Key Data Points
IREN's foresight years ago led to its massive 2025
Although IREN began mining Bitcoin in 2019, management had the foresight to understand that data centers connected to low-cost, grid-connected, renewable energy would be a long-term strategic asset.
As such, the company acquired a substantial amount of grid-connected land, significantly more than IREN had been using for its current Bitcoin mining operations. Currently, IREN's operations take place across three data centers in British Columbia, Canada, spanning 160 megawatts (MW) in total. However, IREN has also purchased another massive 2.75 gigawatts (GW)of power-connected land in Texas, across two sites named Horizon and Childress. For reference, 1 GW equals the power output from an entire nuclear power plant.
Many other neoclouds must rent their land and data centers, and data center operators are currently struggling to find sufficient electricity to power AI data centers. So, even though IREN had only been utilizing a small portion of its overall asset base for Bitcoin mining, investors began to take notice of IREN's position midway through the year.
Things changed drastically in late August, when IREN reported fourth-quarter earnings and disclosed it had become a "preferred partner" to Nvidia (NVDA +0.96%). Management noted that this would enable the company to purchase or lease 10,900 Nvidia GPUs by the end of 2025, representing a significant increase from the 1,900 the company owned as of June 30.
Image source: Getty Images.
In September, Oracle ignited a significant surge in the industry when it announced a massive 359% increase in its cloud backlog, which was later found to be largely backed by a contract with OpenAI. While not directly related to IREN, the announcement showed nearly insatiable demand for AI compute, and investors began to anticipate IREN scaling up quickly.
Then, in early November, IREN announced a landmark deal with Microsoft (MSFT 0.22%). The deal spans five years, with Microsoft agreeing to pre-pay one year's worth of the contract to help fund the buildout of the data center at IREN's Horizon site in Texas.
The total $9.7 billion deal will contribute $1.94 billion in average annualized recurring revenue (ARR), representing a significant increase over IREN's roughly $500 million in revenue in the year ended in June 2025. On its November earnings call, IREN guided for $3.4 billion in ARR by the end of calendar year 2026.
IREN has massive potential, but that potential needs funding
The 2026 guidance for $3.4 billion ARR only accounts for approximately 16% of IREN's 2.91 GW of capacity. Using simple math, this indicates that IREN has the potential to generate $21.25 billion in revenue at current lease rates on its grid-connected land.
Given IREN's market cap is still just $15.1 billion, the stock could be a potential bargain, even after its impressive 2025 performance. However, there are two complications; one, IREN will need to buy a huge number of GPUs, which is very expensive. Despite the Microsoft pre-payment for its deal, IREN still had to raise money beyond that to fund the $5.8 billion in capital expenditures required.
IREN doesn't yet have the internal cash flow to fund a huge buildout on its land, so it will be dependent on the capital markets to some extent for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the ultimate profitability of these projects is uncertain and will be highly dependent on the useful lives of AI GPUs.
However, if IREN can raise capital at reasonable prices and AI GPUs last longer than five years, there may be even more upside to come for this new neocloud.
