A Future $100B Company or a Disappointment?
A shorter article, not really my style, but why not?
IREN really does bring a lot of attention.
That’s the curse of becoming a retail favorite: as many people will hate you as will love you.
Anyhow, there are valid arguments worth responding to. These are some I found.
Dilution
“IREN is a dilution machine. Way more than Nebius.”
IREN has used more ATM issuance, but Nebius has used more convertibles.
Assuming all convertibles convert, Nebius has increased its fully diluted share count by 45% over the last 14 months, while IREN is at 61%. Over the last six months, it’s 22% and 21%, respectively.
Let’s not exaggerate here.
Financing
“They are raising debt. They’ll probably have to dilute way more to fund $25–30B of capex.”
The fact that IREN can get 50% of GPU value in customer prepayments and another 90% in GPU financing on top of that, while keeping its data centers unencumbered and therefore preserving another pool of collateral against which it can raise financing, is very impressive.
Yet people focus on the absolute $25–30B figure and ignore the outstanding work IREN is doing to raise tens of billions of dollars while being a $15B company.
IREN is performing just as well as Nebius in the financing department while being the smaller company.
GSW sponsorship
“$50M per year GSW sponsorship.”
I agree. It makes no sense to anybody.
At least it’s almost humorous that they got to put such an ugly logo on their shirt.
“Too slow”
“Slow as fuck compared to Nebius and CoreWeave.”
IREN is about a year behind CoreWeave and Nebius in AI cloud monetization, but saying that alone is cherry-picking.
IREN came later, but it’s coming stronger.
IREN’s operating ARR as of August 26 was $1B. Nebius exited June at $3B.
For a company that was AI-native and had a much stronger team working on this for a decade before IREN, does that really sound like some crazy gap? Especially considering IREN is now growing faster?
IREN went from a $280M annualized revenue run rate based on its June-quarter average to $1B of operating ARR by August 26.
Once you start delivering contracts, ARR explodes. People are turning a timing issue into a fundamental issue when it isn’t.
CoreWeave and Nebius were earlier. That doesn’t mean IREN can’t catch up.
Moreover, IREN is projecting 300% growth from its current $1B operating ARR to $4B by year-end, already contracted.
Nebius is targeting $8B of year-end ARR at the midpoint, up about 167% from its $3B June exit ARR.
Again, IREN is growing faster in relative terms.
For 2027, IREN is targeting 0.8 GW of cumulative IT delivery, translating to 0.5GW of added delivered capacity. Nebius has said it wants to add more than 1 GW per year starting in 2027. 1/4 of the market cap, 1/2 of the capacity growth.
That doesn’t seem like a crazy difference to me for a company that started this journey years before IREN.
So is IREN really too slow?
Or is it actually one of the most impressive pivot and acceleration stories in the data-center space?
Vertical integration
And that’s before we even get into power capacity.
It’s easier to grow quickly when you lease data centers, but then you can run into problems like Nebius did with DataOne or CoreWeave did with Core Scientific.
Nebius has recognized this problem and is increasingly focusing on wholly owned sites, while CoreWeave is sticking with its existing model.
IREN has pursued vertical integration from day one.
It has the most impressive power portfolio of the three at a fraction of the market cap.
Monetization
Now let’s talk about monetization.
IREN’s base monetization is basically the same as the others.
IREN had around 90 MW operating as of August 26. Based on $1B of operating ARR, that implies:
$11.1M ARR/MW.
Nebius reported $12M ACV/MW for its 2026 base economics.
Then you move further out on the curve.
IREN said its newer three-year contracts are now above $20M/MW, with active discussions around $25M/MW.
Nebius said its Q2 new deals were above $20M/MW, while some Q3 short-duration deals exceeded $40M/MW.
Nebius is capturing higher rates at the right end of the curve, which makes sense considering the depth of its platform.
But on the base deals, the picture is practically the same.
The bigger picture
Like I said, IREN is behind Nebius in monetization and definitely behind in its software stack.
But in terms of speed? IREN takes the crown.
Look at the moves this company is making:
Securing enormous amounts of power and land. Signing contracts. Bringing in high-tier customers like Figure AI, Perplexity, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Fluidstack, Cohere and Higgsfield. Building its software stack from zero. Building a brand. Expanding globally.
It’s genuinely a feat.
IREN is spending a lot of money. It’s rapidly expanding headcount, making acquisitions, developing sites around the world and spending on sponsorships and branding.
But they’re doing this with the ambition of becoming a $100B company, and you don’t get there by operating like a small, conservative infrastructure company.
While I agree IREN has overspent in some areas, particularly the GSW sponsorship and the massive executive compensation package, I also believe they’re taking the steps required to become a data-center giant.
Pieces falling into place
IREN has sold out its 2026 capacity.
It has already pre-sold around one-quarter of the capacity it plans to bring online in H1 2027, and its growth is staggering.
Demand isn’t the problem.
Power and land aren’t the problem.
It now has a close relationship with NVIDIA that should help with GPU access, while its financing options have improved dramatically.
The pieces are falling into place.
But investors tend to become overly emotional in both directions with popular names, which is why, on X, IREN can only be the next vertically integrated neocloud giant or a house of cards about to collapse.
Nothing in between.