IREN Climbs 4% on Report of Unconfirmed Anthropic Cloud Deal; TeraWulf and Applied Digital Hold Flat
An unconfirmed report naming Anthropic as IREN's mystery frontier AI customer sent IREN shares climbing while its closest rivals barely twitched, but the deal carries no verified terms and fresh complaints about IREN's legacy data centers are hanging over the…
Market Movers desk. Editor: David Moadel.
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Shares of IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) are up 4% to $36.70 in morning trading after a report linked the artificial intelligence (AI) cloud provider to Anthropic. That report, which neither company has confirmed, is raising IREN stock while the rest of its peer group barely moves. Even after the jump, IREN stock is still trading below its 50-day moving average of $41.72.
The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining and Digital Power ETF (NASDAQ:WGMI) is flat at $40.25, so the sector as a whole isn’t joining the rally. Across the wider market, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 0.1% to $778.93.
Rival TeraWulf (NASDAQ:WULF), which already holds a confirmed Anthropic lease, is down 0.2% to $13.75. Fellow AI-infrastructure peer Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) is down 0.8% to $23.49.
Anthropic Report Puts a Face on IREN’s Mystery Customer
A media report published Sunday said that Anthropic, a privately held AI developer, has an unannounced multiyear cloud contract with IREN. No financial terms, capacity figures or timetable accompanied the report, and neither company has confirmed the arrangement. The report identifies that customer as Anthropic. IREN disclosed in August that it had signed a multiyear cloud contract with a leading frontier AI lab it couldn’t name.
Confirmation could add a frontier lab to a customer list that already includes Microsoft, Cohere, Perplexity, Figure AI and Fal AI. Horizon 1, IREN’s first liquid-cooled deployment, went to Microsoft, and the company’s AI Cloud revenue more than doubled sequentially to $70.5 million in Q4 FY2026. Most of IREN’s 2026 capacity is already sold.
A Named Customer Sets IREN Apart
IREN builds and operates its own data centers and sells AI cloud capacity, a shift from the Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) mining business it started in. TeraWulf and Applied Digital are making the same move, which is why the three stocks trade together. Only IREN has a reported customer attached this time, which helps explain why IREN stock is rising alone.
Despite the gain, IREN stock is down 3% year to date (YTD). Over the same stretch, TeraWulf stock is up 20% and Applied Digital stock is down 4%.
A named frontier customer turning a public but anonymous contract into evidence that the shift is working supports the bullish view. With $14 billion in committed financing, IREN targets $4 billion in contracted annualized recurring revenue (ARR) operating by year-end. Customer concentration is one of the risks IREN lists, so a second frontier-scale tenant could ease that concern.
However, nothing about the deal is confirmed, and no announced terms exist to size its value or duration. SemiAnalysis said last week it had heard customer complaints. The complaints were about the operational quality of IREN’s legacy data centers in Prince George and Mackenzie, British Columbia.
What to Watch Next
The key question is whether IREN or Anthropic confirms the contract and attaches terms, capacity and a delivery timetable to it. Those details could also show how the deal compares with IREN’s recent three-year contracts, which exceed $20 million in revenue per megawatt.
Shareholders sizing their positions can watch for an IREN response to the British Columbia site-quality complaints. IREN’s Prince George and Mackenzie sites are scheduled for liquid-cooled deployments in 2027, which raises the stakes on that criticism.
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David Moadel is financial writer specializing in stocks, ETFs, options, precious metals, and Bitcoin. David has written well over 1,000 articles for leading online publications, helping investors understand markets, income strategies, and risk.His work has appeared in The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, U.S. News & World Report, TipRanks, ValueWalk, Benzinga, Market Realist, TalkMarkets, Finmasters, 24/7 Wall St., and others.With a master’s degree in education, David has taught at the elementary, high school, and college levels. That teaching background shapes his writing style: clear, educational, and practical. David has also built a loyal social-media audience by providing trustworthy financial content on YouTube, X/Twitter, and StockTwits.