Fremm

Today I spoke for the first time on @FransBakker9812's space about $IREN. Some of my key points for the short term and long term: Short term: 1. IREN is going through a rerate as an AI company. The initial move was early movers who could see beyond the bitcoin miner framing and recognised that IREN's transition to AI would compound on their proven blueprint of mass-printing bitcoin mining facilities which are not far off AI data centers. Most of the market hasn't caught up yet. The Mirantis acquisition, on top of all its software benefits, has a second-order effect of accelerating the rebrand. My thesis is this rerating has just started and will continue as new tech-native investors discover IREN through Mirantis and realise the potential. 2. It's been ~6 months since the Microsoft deal. I didn't expect a new deal at last earnings — IREN is conservative and was always going to execute on Microsoft before committing to another customer. That's partly to prove out the blueprint for the first time post-BTC-to-AI-HPC pivot, and partly to manage the risk of scaling too fast. Now that Dan has posted about delivering on the first Microsoft tranches, my thesis is they'll have the confidence to scale up and run multiple build-outs in parallel. Combine that with the "advanced negotiations" language from last earnings, and I wouldn't be surprised by a deal before or at earnings — either a new customer or a Microsoft extension. With the blueprint now battle-tested through production hell, I also wouldn't be surprised by a second deal at the same time or shortly after (given the 6 months – almost 2 quarters of no deal), to scale data center production simultaneously. The constraint is no longer execution risk — it's capital, and that's what the ATM is for. 3. IREN has been plastering the US and Australia with ad spend. Knowing how conservative they are with capital, I doubt they'd let that momentum die without capitalising on it short-term. That leads me to expect (one or the other) an announcement on their enterprise strategy targeting higher margin, easier to serve customers than just Hyperscalers or something specifically in Australia. 4. I find it hard to believe IREN hasn't front-run commercial negotiations ahead of Sweetwater energising and the Microsoft deal completing. Having that much uncontracted power sitting available without a deal lined up to keep monetisation going feels off for such a highly competent pair of co-founders from deep infrastructure banking backgrounds. 5. IREN has dropped substantial announcements in the last few weeks — Horizon progress, Sweetwater energised, the Mirantis acquisition — all before the earnings call. Hard to believe they'd reveal all of that with nothing left to disclose at earnings. Contrast with last earnings, where they had nothing big and saved the Oklahoma site reveal for the call itself. 6. Mirantis was happy to be acquired in 100% shares. Employees who've built that company over 20+ years accepting stock-only consideration suggests they see the growth ahead in IREN — and potentially what's coming near-term in price accretion (a customer deal). 7. There's a narrative that Dan and Will don't care about short-term price action vs long-term shareholder returns. But with the ATM they need to tap soon — to fund more build-outs and effectively pay for Mirantis — I find it hard to believe they'd let the stock tank when they need to dilute. I think they've been very coordinated with announcements for exactly this reason. They're price-conscious, they have incentive to drive the share price short-term, and they have a final card to play at earnings. 8. Nebius has run hard recently — to a P/E of over 4,000 as per Yahoo and Google Finance. IREN trades around 40 — ~100x lower. With the software FUD now resolved by Mirantis, I think the market will start to see IREN as the more undervalued pure-AI play vs NBIS. 9. In addition to the ‘IREN has no software’ FUD being solved now, there was also light FUD around IREN being an Australian company and therefore less familiar and trustworthy to some American and International investors. I believe with an announcement for an expansion in Australia, this FUD will turn into a strength as IREN’s roots proves to be a highly valuable access point to Australia and even Asia-Pacific. This is similar to NBIS’s perceived strength of being an access point to Europe. Long term: 1. IREN is a one-of-one company. Dan and Will Roberts are first-principles operators who saw the AI compute demand over 5 years ago, knew how to fund it by mining bitcoin and selling it at the spot rate without needing a customer, prioritised renewables from day one, and understood the importance of investing in local communities to avoid NIMBY pushback. Best management team in the space, in my opinion. The market has largely got it wrong assuming that printing AI data center requires a deep tech background — in my view infrastructure banking and the ability to identify, procure and develop large scale sites is far more relevant - everything else is an add-on. 2. AI compute is the oil of the digital world. It's required to run every industry efficiently and competitively from here on. You can't model IREN's future market cap based on point-in-time GPU pricing. Even applying growth rates is too thin — rates can move exponentially via second-order effects (supply chain disruption, AI breakthroughs that ramp compute requirements). This isn't quantitative; it's probabilistic and exponential. If NVDA can be a future 20T market cap company, I wouldn't be surprsied by IREN being a 1T company emerging as the most competent company to plug their chips in. 3. IREN has the best blueprint for mass producing data centers. Vertical integration means they control the refinement loop — every nut and bolt of the build process. If Coreweave or NBIS lease out one piece of that process to another player, how can they control quality? How can they understand how to improve it? IREN can, because they own the whole process. That closed-loop quality feedback lets them refine the blueprint to the point where they can run it across multiple parallel processes with little incremental risk. As time compounds, that's what monetises their estimated 10GW pipeline runway (4.5GW disclosed so far) exponentially faster than their competitors. 4. I've often joked that IREN is the SpaceX for Earth. Like SpaceX, IREN sits at the intersection of three vectors: datacentres are extremely high value right now, has an infinite TAM, and very difficult to build. That difficulty is the part the market hasn't priced in yet — and it's what will eventually command a multiple. SpaceX and NVIDIA both have plenty of competitors but emerge as winners because they built proprietary mass-production blueprints with closed feedback loops and first-principles thinking. Other neocloud players are too diversified or too leveraged on outsourced construction. NBIS has interests well outside data centers. Coreweave is software-first and leases its construction to Core Scientific — so they don't really own their construction quality in full. IREN isn't missing the forest for the trees. They know the real neocloud edge is compute, and that vertically integrating construction — though hard — leads to better service quality, performance, and blueprint refinement for the next datacenter. @mikealfred

@FransBakker9812 @AlexfromBabylon Love it mate!!

“The most important is the narrative violation on time to compute.” This is your choice to make the most important, the sentence in itself is predetermined, not objective on both counts. “It turns out that if you don’t have a lot of experience running a large scale cloud you run into delays. IREN is amazing in constructing the powered shell, but clearly has more difficulty in bringing GPU’s online. Hence the delays. Also because they rely on third party server installs from Dell & co.” Running a large scale cloud is happening after the GPUs are installed and commissioned, a “large scale cloud” implies coherent working GPUs connected by infiniband or similar, delays don’t happen ahead of running a large scale cloud while commissioning GPUs, but during the process of receiving them from an OEM that is chip constraint. You conclude that experience in running was because of the difficulty of bringing GPUs online “hence the delays”. This completely acknowledges, and literally omits the delivery delays from Dell. But you do want to blame Dell to emphasize “server installs”, I wonder why the servers are being included here, server installs are the absolute easiest part of the job. But I know the answer, and you bring it forward soon enough (hint: Nebius). “Next the power narrative requires a reset with moving SW completely to 2027. Smart move to get VR’s, but a violation of the power now narrative. For me its quite clear that they cannot bring the capacity online fast enough to let this be a heavy advantage versus other neoclouds.” You front load your take with a conclusion that you do not deserve to draw. First of all, the “time to compute” narrative does not mean the fastest time to install any chip. It is the fastest time to the highest possible token/MW within a certain window of time that matches customer demand within that window. Let’s turn this take around, if $IREN could have stood capacity up sooner, and would have data centers ready now in Sweetwater, this would have been a 2025 deal with 2025 economics, and for GB300s. As you know, the 2025 economics weren’t great (well you pretend not to know because you believe Nebius got a great deal without knowing the unit economics), and the GB300 isn’t a very efficient product on a token/MW basis. What IREN instead did, was build out the high voltage step-down infrastructure to the tune of 750MW worth of primary substations and a bulk substation all tier III redundant, and now have a blank canvas to sell 2027 VR200 capacity with guaranteed chip delivery from Nividia. Would IREN have opted for GB300 and a 2025 “backlog” for 2026, we would all be crying now because the deal economics would probably not be much better than the $MSFT deal. So instead of being an early mover that goes deep to bring current generation compute online, they chose to go wide instead, and can bring multiples more of next generation compute online a year later. I think you have to realize that this was not a lack of ”ability bringing capacity online fast enough”, but a strategic decision to maximize the token/MW out of their flagship site, by conceding a slower ramp up in initial compute, but catching up by a “go wide” strategy with VR200s into 2027. You can call it what you want, but it certainly is not a shortfall in the "ability to bring capacity online". If you want to quantify “speed of bringing capacity online” you cannot dismiss a strategy that was opted to promote the tokens/MW and the $/MW output, albeit later. Time to compute is not a static slogan that you can apply to fit your narrative. Time to compute is a flexible concept that does not mean a race to indiscriminately bring as much single chips online from now until the end of the site’s capacity. Therefore, there is no “violation” of “power now”. Because that was never a thing in the first place. “Finally it is also clear that even if you design your datacenters for HPC, the organization was not. The Mirantis deal was really neccesary to bring in mature cloud experience and enterprise sales support” “The organization was not ready for HPC” Here you go again steamrolling over the fact that there is a wide variety in what you can label as HPC. IREN has been running their AI cloud for almost 2 years, be it in a very small GPU quantity. The organization has been slowly adapting to this over the course of the last 2 years, and prior to Mirantis, IREN was able to contract Microsoft, contract $500m of AI ARR, and grow their AI revenue from <$1M per Q to $33.6m per Q. IREN has always been ready for AI cloud, which is a form of HPC, you need to call the activity what it is, and using a general term like HPC is purposely misleading because it gives the idea that there is only Bitcoin mining, and HPC. Mature cloud experience, Enterprise sales support, are all words that fit Nebius very well, and yes Mirantis will certainly bring that experience to IREN as well. But nothing from the earnings call screams that IREN needed Mirantis to run AI cloud, let alone HPC. IREN has acquired Mirantis to complement their AI cloud offerings, and connect to a growing TAM of enterprise customers and tap into the sovereign market. Just because IREN decided to do this now, doesn’t mean that everything they did prior to the acquisition should be dismissed as “not ready for HPC”. That’s just disingenuous from you. Finally you say this: “but the execution premium in the valuation versus Nebius for me makes more sense now” This implies that IREN has no execution premium? What exactly has Nebius actually delivered? I agree with you that the valuation of Nebius is rich, and IREN is certainly being discounted. But the bulk of the valuation disparity is because Nebius has agreed to sign more deals for 2027 and beyond. Where IREN has not signed anything for 2027, outside of a 3.4B deal with Nvidia for early 2027. So is Nebius getting an execution premium, or are they just being rewarded for a higher RPO and backlog? You have applied a lot of bias in your take. I have taken the time to give you a rebuttal that carries my personal view on IREN. I really don’t understand how you could ever be in my subscriber group, and still have such bad takes man. It’s a waste of time to try and bring this type of material out there, because you honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. I have talked to IR at IREN and the delays were for the most part due to the GPUs being delayed. ‼️‼️ Why don’t you compliment IREN on their partnership with Nvidia where they get on par with Nebius in GPU priority? This literally solves the issue that you have wrongfully described in your post. If I can give you some advice, try to be a bit more objective next time, and consider that there are many reasons why revenue can be delayed, and by the same token, why deals can be signed later.

$IREN Multiple lessons are incorporated in this earnings call for the IREN community and myself as well. The most important is the narrative violation on time to compute. It turns out that if you don’t have a lot of experience running a large scale cloud you run into delays. IREN is amazing in constructing the powered shell, but clearly has more difficulty in bringing GPU’s online. Hence the delays. Also because they rely on third party server installs from Dell & co. Interestingly that exactly what SemiAnalysis said, but he was ridiculed including by me. A clear blind spot for us all. Next the power narrative requires a reset with moving SW completely to 2027. Smart move to get VR’s, but a violation of the power now narrative. IREN has a triple AAA power portfolio, but for me its quite clear that they cannot bring the capacity online fast enough to let this be a heavy advantage versus other neoclouds. Finally it is also clear that even if you design your datacenters for HPC, the organization was not. The Mirantis deal was really neccesary to bring in mature cloud experience and enterprise sales support. Nobody in the community talked about this, except for me. What was really positive is that for long term management made all the right moves in my view. SW getting VRs, Mirantis, EU/APAC expansion and the NVIDIA deal. So medium/long term the upside is higher, but the execution premium in the valuation versus Nebius for me makes more sense now (that said IREN can still run a bit higher, but the market was right to assign a premium)

@mikealfred @FransBakker9812 @StockTrader_Max @mikealfred, I tagged you as I am your biggest fan :). Hope to talk soon

@FransBakker9812 @StockTrader_Max @fremmseven LOL

Today I spoke for the first time on @FransBakker9812's space about $IREN. Some of my key points for the short term and long term: Short term: 1. IREN is going through a rerate as an AI company. The initial move was early movers who could see beyond the bitcoin miner framing and recognised that IREN's transition to AI would compound on their proven blueprint of mass-printing bitcoin mining facilities which are not far off AI data centers. Most of the market hasn't caught up yet. The Mirantis acquisition, on top of all its software benefits, has a second-order effect of accelerating the rebrand. My thesis is this rerating has just started and will continue as new tech-native investors discover IREN through Mirantis and realise the potential. 2. It's been ~6 months since the Microsoft deal. I didn't expect a new deal at last earnings — IREN is conservative and was always going to execute on Microsoft before committing to another customer. That's partly to prove out the blueprint for the first time post-BTC-to-AI-HPC pivot, and partly to manage the risk of scaling too fast. Now that Dan has posted about delivering on the first Microsoft tranches, my thesis is they'll have the confidence to scale up and run multiple build-outs in parallel. Combine that with the "advanced negotiations" language from last earnings, and I wouldn't be surprised by a deal before or at earnings — either a new customer or a Microsoft extension. With the blueprint now battle-tested through production hell, I also wouldn't be surprised by a second deal at the same time or shortly after (given the 6 months – almost 2 quarters of no deal), to scale data center production simultaneously. The constraint is no longer execution risk — it's capital, and that's what the ATM is for. 3. IREN has been plastering the US and Australia with ad spend. Knowing how conservative they are with capital, I doubt they'd let that momentum die without capitalising on it short-term. That leads me to expect (one or the other) an announcement on their enterprise strategy targeting higher margin, easier to serve customers than just Hyperscalers or something specifically in Australia. 4. I find it hard to believe IREN hasn't front-run commercial negotiations ahead of Sweetwater energising and the Microsoft deal completing. Having that much uncontracted power sitting available without a deal lined up to keep monetisation going feels off for such a highly competent pair of co-founders from deep infrastructure banking backgrounds. 5. IREN has dropped substantial announcements in the last few weeks — Horizon progress, Sweetwater energised, the Mirantis acquisition — all before the earnings call. Hard to believe they'd reveal all of that with nothing left to disclose at earnings. Contrast with last earnings, where they had nothing big and saved the Oklahoma site reveal for the call itself. 6. Mirantis was happy to be acquired in 100% shares. Employees who've built that company over 20+ years accepting stock-only consideration suggests they see the growth ahead in IREN — and potentially what's coming near-term in price accretion (a customer deal). 7. There's a narrative that Dan and Will don't care about short-term price action vs long-term shareholder returns. But with the ATM they need to tap soon — to fund more build-outs and effectively pay for Mirantis — I find it hard to believe they'd let the stock tank when they need to dilute. I think they've been very coordinated with announcements for exactly this reason. They're price-conscious, they have incentive to drive the share price short-term, and they have a final card to play at earnings. 8. Nebius has run hard recently — to a P/E of over 4,000 as per Yahoo and Google Finance. IREN trades around 40 — ~100x lower. With the software FUD now resolved by Mirantis, I think the market will start to see IREN as the more undervalued pure-AI play vs NBIS. 9. In addition to the ‘IREN has no software’ FUD being solved now, there was also light FUD around IREN being an Australian company and therefore less familiar and trustworthy to some American and International investors. I believe with an announcement for an expansion in Australia, this FUD will turn into a strength as IREN’s roots proves to be a highly valuable access point to Australia and even Asia-Pacific. This is similar to NBIS’s perceived strength of being an access point to Europe. Long term: 1. IREN is a one-of-one company. Dan and Will Roberts are first-principles operators who saw the AI compute demand over 5 years ago, knew how to fund it by mining bitcoin and selling it at the spot rate without needing a customer, prioritised renewables from day one, and understood the importance of investing in local communities to avoid NIMBY pushback. Best management team in the space, in my opinion. The market has largely got it wrong assuming that printing AI data center requires a deep tech background — in my view infrastructure banking and the ability to identify, procure and develop large scale sites is far more relevant - everything else is an add-on. 2. AI compute is the oil of the digital world. It's required to run every industry efficiently and competitively from here on. You can't model IREN's future market cap based on point-in-time GPU pricing. Even applying growth rates is too thin — rates can move exponentially via second-order effects (supply chain disruption, AI breakthroughs that ramp compute requirements). This isn't quantitative; it's probabilistic and exponential. If NVDA can be a future 20T market cap company, I wouldn't be surprsied by IREN being a 1T company emerging as the most competent company to plug their chips in. 3. IREN has the best blueprint for mass producing data centers. Vertical integration means they control the refinement loop — every nut and bolt of the build process. If Coreweave or NBIS lease out one piece of that process to another player, how can they control quality? How can they understand how to improve it? IREN can, because they own the whole process. That closed-loop quality feedback lets them refine the blueprint to the point where they can run it across multiple parallel processes with little incremental risk. As time compounds, that's what monetises their estimated 10GW pipeline runway (4.5GW disclosed so far) exponentially faster than their competitors. 4. I've often joked that IREN is the SpaceX for Earth. Like SpaceX, IREN sits at the intersection of three vectors: datacentres are extremely high value right now, has an infinite TAM, and very difficult to build. That difficulty is the part the market hasn't priced in yet — and it's what will eventually command a multiple. SpaceX and NVIDIA both have plenty of competitors but emerge as winners because they built proprietary mass-production blueprints with closed feedback loops and first-principles thinking. Other neocloud players are too diversified or too leveraged on outsourced construction. NBIS has interests well outside data centers. Coreweave is software-first and leases its construction to Core Scientific — so they don't really own their construction quality in full. IREN isn't missing the forest for the trees. They know the real neocloud edge is compute, and that vertically integrating construction — though hard — leads to better service quality, performance, and blueprint refinement for the next datacenter. @mikealfred

@mikealfred Celebrating new deal with @danroberts0101 ?

@mikealfred And IREN