IREN's Mystery Customer Is Anthropic? Fresh Buzz Pushes Stock Higher

A potential Anthropic partnership fuels fresh optimism for the Bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure provider, even as operational concerns linger.

• Anthropic reportedly has an unannounced multi-year cloud deal with IREN, though neither company has confirmed the partnership.
• The potential deal could strengthen IREN’s position in the booming AI infrastructure market.
• IREN trends in Stocktwits’ trending list as retail traders turn ‘bullish.’

IREN Ltd.’s (IREN) shares jumped 8% in overnight trading late Sunday after a report said that Anthropic is the mystery AI cloud customer the company alluded to during its earnings call a few months ago.

The Information published an analysis of the economics of Anthropic’s data center leases, detailing how the AI lab is pushing its cloud partners to accelerate the construction of new data centers.

“People familiar with the relationship say Anthropic also has an unannounced multiyear cloud deal with IREN,” The Information said in its report, according to AI Weekly.

Anthropic’s push to rapidly expand its computing capacity “increasingly depends on current and former bitcoin miners such as Hut 8, TeraWulf, IREN and Nscale,” the report said. Neither Anthropic nor IREN has commented on the reported partnership.

In August, IREN disclosed that it had signed a deal with a leading AI lab but did not identify the customer. “So firstly, customers, new multiyear cloud contracts, including Cohere, Prometheus, Perplexity, Figure AI, Fal AI, Higgsfield AI, and separately, a leading frontier AI lab whose name we’re not able to disclose just yet,” CEO Daniel Roberts said during the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call.

Adding Anthropic to its customer roster would significantly boost IREN, potentially strengthening its position as a provider of AI cloud infrastructure as demand for computing capacity surges. 

IREN: Concerns Over Legacy Data Centers

IREN stock came under pressure in the past week after SemiAnalysis raised concerns about the operational quality of the Bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure provider’s legacy data centers in British Columbia. 

In a series of posts on X on Wednesday, SemiAnalysis said it had heard reports from multiple customers and end users about IREN’s sites in Prince George and Mackenzie, describing them as the “#1 worst site in the industry” according to users.

Retail View On IREN

IREN was the top trending ticker on Stocktwits at the time of writing, with a ‘bullish’ retail sentiment and several traders expecting the stock to push higher on Monday.

“$IREN one of the companies needs to confirm deal or this is just a pump,” a trader wrote.

Another said: “$IREN potential 20% up day coming up for IREN based on the incredible Anthropic news. Been going long since $36.75 in overnight trading. Current trailing stop at $35.95.”

IREN is the weakest performer in the neocloud group, which includes CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius (NBIS), with shares down nearly 7% year to date.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.<