IREN's $100 Price Target Cut as Bernstein Backs AI Cloud Shift

Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani cut IREN's price target to $100 from $125 after the ₱91.77 trillion ($1.5 trillion) crypto drawdown that started in October.

The firm still calls IREN its top pick among AI-focused Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin fell 40% from its October high as crypto-linked equities like Strategy and Bitmine struggled, even while the S&P 500 printed a new record in April.

IREN contracted 150,000 GPUs that generate ₱226.37 billion ($3.7 billion) in annualized revenue once fully deployed. Half of those units are locked into a five-year deal with Microsoft. The company expects ₱978.88 million ($16 million) in AI cloud revenue this year, jumping to ₱85.65 billion ($1.4 billion) by 2027 when its Bitcoin mining operations sunset.

Chhugani and three colleagues wrote that IREN remains their top pick despite the price target cut. The analysts see the AI cloud segment delivering $2.1 billion in adjusted EBITDA by 2027. That bet comes as mining difficulty fell 11%—the largest drop since China's 2021 crackdown—and miner revenue dropped to $28-35 million daily as of April.

IREN projects $6 billion in cloud revenue by 2030 with 80% margins and $5 billion in adjusted EBITDA. The company's 4.5 gigawatt power portfolio gives it infrastructure scale as smaller miners capitulate amid production costs exceeding Bitcoin's market price at $87,000-$90,000 per coin, with Bernstein expecting IREN's Bitcoin mining operations to completely sunset by 2027.