IREN has been on a tear of late, gaining more than 500% in the past six months to surge past MARA as the largest public bitcoin miner by market cap. That hasn't stopped analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein more than tripling their price target for the stock on Wednesday, setting a new goal of $75 per share and maintaining an outperform rating — based on an expected "exponential" scale up in its AI cloud business.
The call implies roughly 80% upside from Tuesday's closing price of $41.77, according to The Block's IREN price page, and reflects what the analysts led by Gautam Chhugani described as a "breakout" from the pack of bitcoin miners attempting to reposition themselves, to differing degrees, as artificial intelligence infrastructure providers.
"We believe IREN has made adequate progress for us to take the AI cloud business seriously, and build an investment case for re-rating," the Bernstein analysts wrote in a note to clients. With IREN shares already up more than 305% year-to-date, they see further multiple expansion as its AI business matures and scales beyond proof-of-concept into longer-term contracts.
IREN gained more than 12% in early Wednesday trading — reaching a new all-time high above $47 — having already risen 115% over the past month alone. With a current market cap of $12.2 billion, it is worth nearly double its closest competitor, MARA, which is valued at $6.95 billion.
IREN/USD price chart. Image: The Block/TradingView.
Building a vertically integrated AI cloud business
Unlike some of its diversifying peers, striking capital-light hosting deals with hyperscale players such as CoreWeave, IREN has opted to build a vertically integrated AI cloud business. The company has expanded its GPU fleet tenfold in recent months to more than 23,000 units, including Nvidia's Blackwell chips, and now targets a $500 million annualized revenue run rate from AI services by the first quarter of 2026 — up from just $14 million in early 2025, the analysts said.
Bernstein argues that this rapid scaling, paired with IREN's control of nearly 3 gigawatts of low-cost power capacity, positions it differently from miners reliant on external partners. Owning the power, land, and data centers outright allows IREN to capture the full economics of GPU capacity, rather than giving away a cut through lease payments, the analysts explained. Early deployments have already achieved near-full utilization, and hardware margins are approaching 98%, they noted.
Bernstein now values IREN using a sum-of-the-parts approach, discarding its previous discounted cash flow model, attributing 87% of enterprise value to AI and co-location potential and just 13% to bitcoin mining. At $75 per share, IREN would trade at around $7.5 million per megawatt — a premium to AI-pivoting miners but still significantly below traditional neocloud peers such as CoreWeave, where multiples average closer to $33 million per megawatt.
"As IREN continues to scale its AI business, we believe it still leaves room for multiple expansion," Chhugani said.
EV ($Mn)/planned MW. Image: Bernstein.
While acknowledging execution and financing risks, Bernstein also pointed to IREN's operating flexibility as another strength, with the company able to toggle between bitcoin mining and AI hosting depending on economics.
Despite its strong push into AI cloud hosting, IREN remains one of the largest self-operated bitcoin miners in the U.S. with 50 EH/s hashpower capacity, generating around $600 million in annualized EBITDA at current bitcoin prices, which helps fund the AI capital expenditure, the analysts noted.
Chhugani maintains long positions in various cryptocurrencies.
