Parkolour Insights

Reflecting on $IREN Over the last couple of days I spoke with multiple people in close contact with $IREN's management team, including investors who attended the RAISE Summit this week. Given the insights I've gathered, I think it's an appropriate time to reflect on $IREN and share my latest thoughts. It's no secret that $IREN has been somewhat slow on the commercial side, at least relative to the likes of $NBIS and $CRWV. I for one thought we'd have seen a Sweetwater deal by now, let alone substantial parts of the remaining Childress capacity pre-contracted. So what's stopping $IREN from signing these multi-hundred MW deals? In short, nothing is really "stopping" them. It comes down more to a few factors shaping their decision to hold off where other cloud providers perhaps wouldn't. Based on management's comments both on and off camera, I can confidently say demand truly isn't the issue. Cloud capacity in this market is sparse and supply can't keep up. In fact, I've heard $IREN could easily sell out 100% of its 2027 capacity today if it wanted to. The catch is that selling capacity which won't come online for another 6, 9, or 12 months yields significantly less than capacity arriving sooner. Customers want capacity today, and they're willing to pay a substantial premium for it. So while selling far into the future might prop up the stock, commercially it may not be the most prudent strategy in this environment. That dynamic can obviously shift over time, but given how far supply sits behind demand, it won't change overnight, and as it stands, holding off as long as possible yields better long-term returns. Not only do returns shrink the further out you pre-contract, but the available buyer pool shrinks with it. Selling capacity well into the future means gatekeeping much of the smaller, higher-margin clientele while mostly attracting the lower-paying hyperscalers. As we know, $IREN is increasingly moving up the stack, effectively cutting out the middle-man that hyperscalers represent, as evident in their recent Mirantis acquisition. On that note, $IREN apparently has multiple LOIs and customer commitments for high-margin managed cloud services set to take effect once the Mirantis deal closes over the coming weeks. I've now also heard several times that $IREN takes customer selection and contract structure extremely seriously. Creditworthiness matters, but management also wants clients that can scale their compute demand substantially as $IREN ramps capacity. The only near-term downside is that this due diligence takes time, yet the longer-term advantages of the approach are obvious. Beyond contract timing and customer selection, I believe some of it also comes down to operational reasons. We know the 1.4 GW Sweetwater campus is earmarked for the upcoming VR200 (Rubin) capacity, whose supply won't ramp until late this year into early next. That partly explains why the site isn't up and running already, since all they could lease out right now would be current Blackwell generation. The flip side is that $IREN could simply build "Horizon-style" capacity at Sweetwater, the same style they're currently developing at Childress, since those facilities are fully capable of housing next-gen Rubins, and have them ready by early next year, right as NVIDIA fully ramps Rubin production. And while $IREN is already doing foundation work at Sweetwater, it could still easily take another 3-4 quarters before we see operational capacity there. So what's the holdup? I believe a major reason for the slow ramp at Sweetwater is that they want to implement lessons learned from their Horizon build-outs at Childress, making the Sweetwater process more efficient, less costly, and thus more economical. Here I want to give a big shoutout to my friend @FransBakker9812, who found that $IREN has recently developed proprietary methods to make elements of the construction process significantly more streamlined, saving time and cost across all future liquid-cooled builds. He shared more specifics on that with his "Research” and “Founding” subscription tiers, which I recommend checking out. I firmly believe what some might see as a relatively slow ramp, given $IREN's starting position, is management's way of doing things right. Start with the first liquid-cooled buildouts in Horizons 1-4, implement lessons from one Horizon batch to the next, then apply the full set of process and workflow improvements at Sweetwater. This closely mirrors what $IREN has always done since its mining era, when it started small and progressively scaled its construction operations in both size and speed. A true construction flywheel. Interestingly, I've just heard that $IREN plans to develop Sweetwater 1, Sweetwater 2, and the 1.6 GW Oklahoma site in parallel over the coming years. That shows just how exponential their construction ramp really is. In short, I believe holding out on the next wave of contracts comes down to a few factors: 1) Signing well ahead of commissioning means giving up pricing upside and attracting only a small subset of clients. 2) Customer selection and contract structure are a big part of $IREN's long-term strategy. It takes more time than simply selling to the highest bidder, but should build stronger customer relationships over the long run. 3) Scaling construction in a controlled manner, carrying critical lessons from current builds into the next. Slow start, exponential growth curve. None of this means we won't see any deals this year, but it does add color on why commercial progress on closing deals has been slower than many of us expected. As for deal activity and my current expectations there, it helps to step back and consider how $IREN's near-term capacity is structured. We should expect the 50k B300 units $IREN procured back in March to be fully contracted and installed by year-end, roughly 33k at Mackenzie and another ~17k at Childress. Apparently first deliveries for Mackenzie have already arrived and are being installed. Given this progress, I'd expect $IREN to announce having contracted substantial parts of these air-cooled Blackwells by August earnings at the latest. This is the low-hanging fruit. And worth noting, since $IREN first gave ARR guidance for that capacity, GPU rates across the board have moved up substantially. If they sign anything close to what they landed with the 60 MW NVIDIA deal, their year-end guidance of $3.7B should climb to at least $3.9-$4.1B. Beyond this, there's plenty of 2027 capacity that could get contracted later this year, including 190 MW of air-cooled capacity at Childress, 30 MW at Canal Flats, 150 MW of liquid-cooled Horizon 5-6, and 300 MW of liquid-cooled capacity at Sweetwater 1. We don't have guidance on when this capacity comes online next year or what the ramp schedule looks like, but since liquid-cooled greenfield development takes longer than retrofitting existing air-cooled buildings (currently mining BTC), I'd expect the remaining 220 MW of air-cooled capacity to come online within the first couple of quarters of 2027. For that reason, I think the odds those few hundred MW get pre-contracted later this year are relatively high. The trickier part is the 150 MW of Horizons 5-6 and the 300 MW of liquid-cooled Sweetwater capacity. I think there's a decent shot at least one of the two gets pre-contracted in 2026, especially if it's for a hyperscaler or a frontier lab, which are far more inclined to sign a few quarters ahead. Either way, it's just a matter of time until contracts start flowing. It's clear to me that $IREN is playing the long game and isn't compromising long-term upside for short-term euphoria in the share price. As a long-term investor, I fully support that. I do wish, however, that $IREN were a bit more open about strategy and roadmap. It's obvious they're holding their cards close to the chest, but I find management has been overly vague on strategy. It takes investors like me piecing the puzzle together to make sense of how $IREN plans to scale into the next hyperscaler. Ironically, management does share a fair bit of interesting and useful information if you get the chance to meet them in person, yet on earnings calls they come across as overly reserved. That said, the future looks bright, and I have no reason to get overly concerned about disappointing price action. With a bit of luck we're in for a string of positive catalysts, starting with the Horizon 1 handoff in a couple of weeks. I also want to take a moment to thank @OMCapitalGroup, who did an excellent job gathering information and insights while attending RAISE this week. If it weren't for his work, I wouldn't be nearly as informed, so big props to him for taking the time to travel all the way to Paris for $IREN due diligence and then going out of his way to keep me updated with everything he picked up, even putting some of my own questions to management directly. He's relatively new to X, but he told me he's going to start posting shortly and jump into Frans' spaces more often. Do me a favor and give this fella a follow. Have a good one, cheers! ✌️ Thumbnail Credit (enhanced version): @AndyDTrades

$IREN: Nvidia DSX OS Thanks to @TheTechInvest for posting this clip of RAISE Summit. Starting at 9:10, Nvidia and Mirantis representatives talk about how $IREN will be the first adopter of Nvidia DSX OS which is an Open Source AI Cloud Platform with Nvidia Orchestration made available through integrating Nvidia APIs. This seems to signal that $IREN's SW1 Campus is going to be the first Nvidia DSX site serving enterprises and possibly sovereign compute. Open source will be open source of the whole stack from the Nemotron Model down to the Orchestration layer. People ask why I'm with IREN being mediocre at software, well it's because Nvidia will have DSX OS.

Okay guys, I don't think people got the memory thesis at all… peak ASP pricing was never the thesis for memory. And for the ones that do Wallstreet is creating a false narrative. Oversupply is pure bs and i will explain why. The memory thesis first, it is about supply shortage. Second, it is about signing LTAs. And third, it is about memory moving up in importance in the stack. They're moving into co-design, more innovation, becoming increasingly important in how the AI infrastructure and operations are being built. And then @EugeneNg that points to Bloomberg's sufficiency ratio and the BofA/TrendForce exhibits as whole memory. DRAM, NAND, all products. Those exhibits show quarter-over-quarter change, decelerating from 2Q26. But this only means price stopped climbing as fast, not that prices are falling. It visually looks like that, but a growth rate cooling toward zero is still prices at a really high plateau. So that only shows momentum, not level. And then if you look into HBM, single digit % of DRAM bits, but the book is locked in 3–5 year LTAs. SK Hynix removed price caps entirely on HBM. Micron excluded HBM from the LTAs too. So the floors were signed in 2026. Then if most of the volume is locked in LTAs, there's barely anything left trading at spot. So when you get a soft spot print, there's just a thin tail. It's not the market. And every primary vendor is still saying demand exceeds supply. And as a buyer, you don't sign an uncapped, floored, multi-year agreement on a component that you think is going to be in excess in 24 months. So the buyers are disagreeing with the chart, and it's the current sentiment Wall Street is trying to flush out. I personally call the pricing peak in 2027. As you can see below, this is an older graph and some inputs have changed, but not the overall dynamic. And that peak is dependent on the architecture ramp… higher cutting-edge stacks drive ASPs higher again when the next architecture comes online. So it's a peak within the generation, not a hard ceiling. And again, the thesis was never about continuously raising ASPs. It's about shortage. It's about monetizing on a high price level for a longer period of time. And it's about moving from a supplier to a co-design, integrated partner in the AI infra build-out. See my architecture related asp post below👇 $MU $SNDK $WDC $000660.KS $005930.KS

Let’s debrief. $ZETA formally announced their expansion of services into BI. Our original speculation were spot on. Here’s what we now know: > 1. $ZETA has opened a new TAM, now exposing the company to $35B+ of revenue potential. Business Intelligence opportunity is massive... Growing at a 9.3% CAGR, this is a $81.5 billion TAM by 2033. You may recall that I mentioned this yesterday prior to the fire-side, this "expansion" allows $ZETA to bypass the CMO, and draw revenue from CIO, COO, CEO activities – rather than solely relying on marketing spend to hit their yearly targets. > 2. In the next 30-40 days, $ZETA will have fully migrated their data cloud over to $PLTR's Foundry platform. This means... Any customers who opted into this migration, and now potential $PLTR commercial clients. The same goes for $ZETA, as any commercial client of $PLTR can now turn $ZETA services on "with a click of a button". This is what management meant by this partnership is a GTM strategy for both companies, and will be accretive to both companies. This is an AMAZING flywheel. > 3. Operating margin expansion. Due to the move over to Foundry, $ZETA is reallocating spend from previous cloud providers and routing it into $PLTR for their hosting services. Interestingly enough, $ZETA identified that this is a significant cost savings for them, as they expect it'll be quite "additive" to operating margin this year and beyond. "I think it'll [Palantir], drive down our percentage of operating expenses as sales to marketing revenue" – David Steinberg, CEO > 4. $ZETA expects to WIN their very first customer (as we anticipated), this quarter, from $PLTR's commercial roster. "In the next 30-45 days, we will have at least ONE joint launched enterprise client from their side this quarter – very possibly, more." – David Steinberg, CEO Now this is critical because it shows you that not only is the flywheel fully engaged, but its becoming accretive ahead of schedule. David also happen to mention that he is spear-heading the first couple deals himself to ensure this program starts off on the right footing. > 5. $PLTR sourced revenues will become accretive this year. Yes, you read that correctly. We first anticipated that this partnership would not be revenue generating until early 2027. That's clearly not the case anymore... As I just outlined in point #4, $ZETA expects at least one client from the $PLTR roster by the end of the quarter. This is remarkable, because any revenue that is generated here has absolutely NOT been captured in any forward guidance. On the topic of the $100M ARR... "This news strengthens our outlook to deliver ahead of schedule. – Chris Greiner, CFO I think $ZETA is now wonderfully positioned to smash this years guidance, but also their 2028 long-term guide perhaps a year ahead of schedule. > 6. Athena is being re-engineered into something... bigger. When asked about what we should expect at Zeta live 26, David clearly drew a picture towards the end of the call that gave me the impression he wants to evolve Athena into the Business Intelligence/Marketing operating system for his clients. I find this interesting. This is worth a lot more thought and investigation. I won't comment on this too much right now, it's worth another post – but this could put $ZETA into conflict with $PLTR's product line. Which, I find odd. I doubt they would sign such a long-term partnership agreement, if they knew product roadmaps would collide over time. I'll give this one some more thought, and write about it soon. > 7. I think Chris Greiner, the CFO, let the cat out of the bag. I believe $ZETA will remain GAAP profitable for the rest of 2026 (Q2, Q3, Q4). Reading between the lines, he said this: "That is what has been allow us to grow free cash flow, and now, GAAP earnings even faster than revenue." It's the "and now" line... Speculation here, but that sounds a forward leaning bit of contextual language given that Q1 was NOT GAAP profitable. 👀 > 8. Lastly, $ZETA x $PLTR are completely aligned on the vision of technology, AI and client/business relationships... "Palantir is an organization that puts their money where their mouth is. One of the things Alex [Alex Karp CEO] is really focused on, and the things that he and I have chatted about, is how he wants to take the best technology possible and help his clients solve their biggest problems... ...They didn't really have a marketing solution until they decided to partner with us." – David Steinberg, CEO I view this statement as a signal. Yes, David has mentioned previously that he views the client relationship through a similar lens to Karp – with the ultimate goal to sell your client outcomes, not widgets and workflows. But ultimately, I read this quote, and realize that $PLTR wanted to (and would ONLY) integrate with a company offering a world class solution, of which... nobody else current can. In consumer intelligence and marketing... That's Zeta Global. $ZETA

I've held $IREN since it was Iris Energy at $7 in 2022. Rode it to $1. Kept buying. Averaged $3–4. Today I hold 703,000 shares likely one of the largest private individual positions outside the founders. So believe me when I say this comes from a shareholder, not a critic: I am appalled by the compensation package the board just tabled — 9.1 million RSUs each for the Co-CEOs. 18.2M units combined. Roughly 5% of the company. ~$700M+ at current prices. Time-vested. Not performance-vested. Show up for four years, collect. @danroberts0101 and Will have executed brilliantly Microsoft, NVIDIA, Childress. And shareholders have already paid them for it: highest-paid CEOs in Australia in FY24, billionaires alongside us on their existing equity. But a board exists to negotiate on behalf of shareholders, not to ratify whatever retention math a compensation consultant produces. Diluting every owner by ~5% with zero performance hurdles after stripping the performance conditions out of prior PRSUs in 2025 is a governance pattern, not a one-off. Founders who preach alignment should welcome shareholders who insist on it. @mikealfred @MikePowerX

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