IREN (IREN) vs. CORZ and APLD: Can Its AI Cloud Buildout Turn Contracted Demand Into Profits?

Is IREN a good stock to buy? We came across a bullish thesis on IREN Limited on Compounding Your Wealth's Substack by Sergey. In this article, we will summarize the bulls' thesis on IREN. IREN Limited's share was trading at $37.93 as of August 6th 2026. IREN's trailing and forward P/E were 47.82 and 136.99 respectively according to Yahoo Finance.

IREN Limited is shifting away from Bitcoin mining and building itself into a cloud computing company for artificial intelligence. This means securing power, building data centers, installing GPUs (the chips that power AI), and delivering computing capacity to customers. Its fastest growing business is AI Cloud, and that is now the real story behind the stock. Compared to companies like CoreWeave or Nebius, IREN is less about software and more about physical execution — securing land and power, building and connecting data centers, and getting them ready for customers.

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In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, revenue fell to $144.8 million from $184.7 million the previous quarter, adjusted profit (EBITDA) dropped to $59.5 million from $75.3 million, and the company posted a net loss of $247.8 million. This decline shows that investors are not focused on the shrinking mining business. Instead, they are betting on IREN turning its AI contracts into a much bigger infrastructure business.

The bullish case is built on the idea that power and ready-to-use computing capacity are becoming more valuable as demand for AI grows. IREN can expand by bringing more secured power online and installing more GPUs on that capacity. Converting existing sites in British Columbia and Texas to air-cooled systems gives it a faster way to start earning revenue than building entirely new liquid-cooled data centers. The numbers support this shift: Bitcoin mining revenue fell to $111.2 million from $167.4 million as older mining hardware was retired, while AI Cloud revenue nearly doubled to $33.6 million from $17.3 million.

Management's plan for 2026 is ambitious: 480 megawatts of AI Cloud capacity, 150,000 GPUs, and $3.7 billion in annual recurring revenue by year-end. Secured power has already grown to 5 gigawatts, with new sites planned in Europe and Asia Pacific. The first phase of its Childress site, called Horizon 1, is set to be handed over to Microsoft in the third quarter, with three more phases planned by year-end. About 3,000 workers are currently on site, which shows the scale of construction underway. If these projects stay on schedule, bulls expect a quick shift toward a much larger AI Cloud business. The fact that all current capacity is already booked by customers also suggests IREN is limited by supply, not by lack of demand.

This bullish view is reinforced by IREN's five-year, $3.4 billion AI Cloud contract with NVIDIA, expected to generate around $700 million a year and covering 60 megawatts of Blackwell chip capacity at Childress. NVIDIA has also committed to investing up to $2.1 billion, which will be paid out gradually as infrastructure is built, becoming fully invested once IREN deploys 600,000 GPUs. Microsoft remains IREN's most important customer for now, and about 95% of the money needed for GPU purchases is expected to come from customer prepayments and equipment financing rather than IREN's own cash. Because so much future revenue already depends on these commitments, investors will be watching closely whether IREN can actually build and deliver on time — any delay would make the 2026 targets harder to hit.