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IREN Budgets $25 Billion To $30 Billion For Its AI Build-Out — More Than Its Entire $13.9 Billion Market Value

IREN stock has plunged 54% from highs earlier this year.

Matteo Parrino Jonathan Ponciano

Matteo Parrino, Jonathan Ponciano

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IREN Budgets $25 Billion To $30 Billion For Its AI Build-Out — More Than Its Entire $13.9 Billion Market Value

$IREN ended the week at $35.19, less than half its 52-week high of $76.87 and still above its 52-week low of $28.93. Friday's close valued the Bitcoin miner turned AI cloud provider at about $13.9 billion. Behind that price sit a week of losses, a Citadel filing from September 30, a $9.7 billion Microsoft contract and a spending plan bigger than the company's entire market value.

What's Happening?

The losses came fast this week. The shares ended Tuesday at $41.28, then fell more than 6% on Wednesday. Wednesday also brought public criticism on X from SemiAnalysis, a chip-industry research firm. It passed along customer complaints, outages among them, about IREN's two older British Columbia sites and gave the company's Texas facilities better marks.

The longer view cuts both ways. Zacks Investment Research put the stock's three-month decline at about 7% as of Thursday. Over three years, the shares had returned about 1,093% as of Tuesday, Yahoo Finance figures show.

Big Buyer

Citadel has also turned up in the paperwork. In a Schedule 13G, a passive ownership disclosure, filed with the SEC on September 30, Citadel's group reported holding 18,687,938 IREN shares, or 4.7% of the company, as of September 23. The filing checks the box for "ownership of 5 percent or less of a class." In plain terms, the group is reporting that it is not above the 5% reporting threshold.

Most of those shares sit with Citadel Securities, the broker-dealer, which accounts for 14,152,102 shares, or 3.6%. Citadel Advisors, the investment adviser, accounts for 824,029 shares, or 0.2%. A market maker holds shares as inventory so it can fill buy and sell orders, which is not the same thing as an investment position.

Kenneth Griffin is listed as someone who "may be deemed to beneficially own" all 18,687,938 shares through the entities he controls, with shared voting power and no sole voting power. The report is a snapshot of a single date, not a record of trades.

Crypto To AI

Under the share price is a company trading Bitcoin mining for AI computing, and Microsoft anchors that shift. Its five-year AI cloud deal with IREN is worth $9.7 billion. In August, Microsoft signed off on Horizon 1, the first 50-megawatt site. According to Zacks, three more phases are scheduled before the end of 2026.

The June quarter was the first in which AI sales beat mining sales. It still ended in a $684 million loss, mostly from non-cash charges on mining machines being retired, Zacks reported. Across the full fiscal year, revenue grew about 41% to $707 million.

Some Pretty Lofty Aspirations

Then there is the bill. Management's fiscal 2027 capital budget of $25 billion to $30 billion tops IREN's roughly $13.9 billion market value. The money is meant to lift capacity to about 800 megawatts in 2027, from around 300 megawatts this year. About $14 billion is already in hand or committed: GPU loans, customer prepayments and about $7.6 billion of June-end cash, of which $1.7 billion is restricted. Zacks says IREN wants another $8 billion from loans and prepayments.

SemiAnalysis also mentioned Nvidia's planned $2.1 billion investment in IREN, arguing the money should help the company avoid repeating the compromises made at its older sites, Stocktwits reported.

Meanwhile, contracts are running ahead of the machines. IREN has $4 billion in contracted annual recurring revenue tied to its 2026 capacity, and about $1 billion was live by late August. Yahoo Finance's calendar estimates November 5 for IREN's next quarterly results.

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