Simply put
- Global investment firm Bernstein has upgraded AI computing company IREN with an “outperform” rating, increasing its price target from $75 to $125.
- On Tuesday, IREN’s stock climbed roughly 2%.
- IREN is the latest Bitcoin miner to strike significant deals with leading tech firms.
On Tuesday, Bernstein assigned an Outperform rating to IREN and adjusted its price target for the following day. This Bitcoin mining and data center company recently secured a $9.7 billion cloud services agreement with Microsoft.
Analysts at Bernstein pointed out that this deal illustrates how crypto miners can tap into the AI sector for profit. They noted that IREN’s strengths include on-site power generation, prompting them to raise the price target to $125 per share. IREN’s stock traded above $69 on Tuesday, reflecting a 2% increase, and it has surged 1,000% over the past six months.
Based in Sydney, IREN will furnish Microsoft with access to Nvidia’s GB300 GPUs under the five-year deal.
The memo stated, “This agreement reinforces that Bitcoin miners are uniquely positioned, leveraging their significant power access in a power-constrained environment, which maximizes the yield from power interconnections.”
IREN’s partnership with Microsoft is the latest in a series of agreements made between major tech firms and Bitcoin mining companies.
Recently, Cipher Mining revealed a $5.5 billion, 15-year leasing deal with Amazon Web Services aimed at providing space and power for AI workloads. In September, Cipher also signed a $3 billion agreement with Fluidstack for high-performance computing services. Additionally, Google announced plans to boost its investment in Bitcoin miner Terrawolf with another $1.4 billion, increasing its total stake to $3.2 billion.
Typically, Bitcoin miners manage vast operations filled with computers that handle transactions on the crypto network. As some miners accumulate considerable computing power, there’s a shift towards aligning their infrastructure with rising AI demands.
However, certain experts caution that the similarities between these industries might be overstated, as AI operations generally require significantly more energy.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading around $101,320, down 5.8% within the last 24 hours and falling over 11% in the past week, according to CoinGecko.
In a prediction market by Myriad, a majority—over 80%—of participants are inclined to agree with crypto entrepreneur KBM, who forecasts Bitcoin will dip to $100,000, while they disagree with trader Mando’s prediction of a rise to $120,000. Myriad operates independently under the larger Dastan company.
