JPMorgan analyst Richard Choe just did something relatively rare on Wall Street: a double upgrade. He moved IREN Limited, formerly known as Iris Energy, from Underweight all the way to Overweight, skipping the neutral middle ground entirely. His new price target of $65 represents a 41% jump from the prior $46 mark, and the reasoning boils down to one word: Nvidia.
The catalyst is a $5.5 billion deal between IREN and Nvidia that effectively repositions the company as what JPMorgan calls a leading “neocloud provider.” For a firm that built its reputation on Bitcoin mining infrastructure, that’s quite the career change.
From hash rates to GPU racks
IREN has been systematically converting its power-hungry Bitcoin mining facilities into AI cloud computing centers, leveraging existing electrical capacity and physical infrastructure that would cost competitors years and billions to replicate from scratch.
The Nvidia partnership is the headline deal, but IREN has been stacking contracts across the AI ecosystem. New partnerships with Prometheus, Figure AI, and an unnamed frontier AI lab round out a customer base that looks increasingly diversified beyond crypto.
Pricing dynamics tell perhaps the most compelling part of the story. AI compute services are now commanding $15 to $20 or more per watt, a significant premium over the $10 to $15 per watt range that prevailed in earlier deals.
Customer prepayments now contribute between 25% and 50% of revenue. The company has revised its annual recurring revenue forecast to $4 billion for 2026. IREN is also planning to expand capacity by roughly 0.5 gigawatts by 2027.
Wall Street’s broader read
JPMorgan isn’t alone in its bullishness. The Wall Street consensus sits at Strong Buy, with eight analysts rating the stock a Buy and two holding at neutral. The average price target ranges between $77 and $81, implying roughly 77% upside from recent trading levels near $42.
The stock’s initial reaction was a dip of around 4%. The gap between current price and analyst consensus suggests the market hasn’t fully priced in IREN’s pivot.
What makes the JPMorgan call especially notable is its symmetry. On the same day Choe upgraded IREN, he moved in the opposite direction on MARA Holdings, downgrading that stock from Overweight to Underweight. MARA remains one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners, still heavily committed to its original business model.
The contrast is deliberate. JPMorgan is essentially telling clients that the future belongs to companies converting crypto mining infrastructure into AI compute capacity, not those doubling down on proof-of-work mining alone.