IREN shares rise on reports of a potential Anthropic contract

what happened

IREN shares received a boost after a report said Anthropic, the company behind the Claude large-language model, had agreed a multiyear cloud deal with IREN. Dow Jones Newswires, carrying a Barron’s report, said the stock rose 3.9% to $36.57 before Monday’s opening bell.

The Information reported that Anthropic has an undisclosed multiyear agreement with IREN as it works to bring its leased data centers online faster. Neither Anthropic nor IREN immediately responded to Barron’s requests for comment. Anthropic may be the AI partner IREN referred to in August, when it disclosed a new cloud contract alongside its fiscal fourth-quarter results.

At that time, co-CEO Daniel Roberts described the agreement as a new multiyear contract with a leading frontier AI lab. IREN has also agreed to sell $9.7 billion of AI cloud capacity to Microsoft and reached a deal with Nvidia in May to deploy five gigawatts of AI infrastructure across its data centers. The stock had fallen about 7% for the year through Friday’s close amid weaker cryptocurrency prices and concerns over the cost of its AI transition. Barron’s is operated by Dow Jones & Co. and published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

why it matters

The report highlights IREN’s shift from Bitcoin mining toward energy supply and AI data-center capacity. A potential Anthropic contract could draw more attention to that strategy, although the companies had not confirmed the agreement.

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