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IREN favors AI cloud in high-stakes break from Bitcoin roots

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IREN favors AI cloud in high-stakes break from Bitcoin roots

IREN Ltd., once known for mining Bitcoin, is undergoing a dramatic reinvention as an AI infrastructure provider—a transformation that will face a critical test when the company reports second-quarter earnings on Thursday.

Summary

  • IREN has pivoted from Bitcoin mining to AI cloud infrastructure, repurposing its energy sites into data centers and securing a $9.7 billion partnership with Microsoft to support next-generation compute.
  • Shares have sold off sharply ahead of Q2 earnings as investors focus on dilution risk.
  • The upcoming earnings report has investors concerned over whether funding roughly 140,000 GPUs by year-end could require equity issuance.

Formerly Iris Energy, IREN has shifted away from crypto mining and into what it calls a “Neocloud” model, repurposing its stranded-energy Bitcoin sites into large-scale data centers designed to support artificial intelligence workloads.

A $9.7 billion partnership with Microsoft helped position IREN as a potential player in the race to supply next-generation compute capacity.

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The ambition has not come cheap

Ahead of earnings, IREN shares have tumbled, falling nearly 19% intraday on Wednesday and down about 28% over the past five days, as investors worry that funding the company’s GPU-heavy cloud expansion could require dilutive equity issuance.

After a 314% rally over the past year, the pullback underscores growing skepticism about whether IREN can scale its AI cloud business without eroding shareholder value.

The upcoming earnings report represents a clear break from the company’s Bitcoin mining past, shifting attention to cloud execution, financing discipline, and competition with established players like Amazon and Oracle—making it a critical test of the company’s pivot.

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IREN isn’t alone

Other companies have attempted comparable transformations—some successfully, others less so:

  • Core Scientific – Transitioned from pure Bitcoin mining to offering high-performance computing and AI colocation services after emerging from bankruptcy, leveraging existing infrastructure to attract AI customers.
  • Hut 8 – Expanded beyond crypto mining into HPC and data center services, pitching its energy assets as ideal for AI workloads.
  • Northern Data – Repositioned itself as a European AI and cloud infrastructure provider, shifting investor focus from Bitcoin exposure to GPU-based compute capacity.
  • Nvidia (earlier era) – While not a crypto miner, Nvidia successfully pivoted from gaming-focused GPUs to becoming the backbone of AI compute, showing how infrastructure players can redefine their identity through demand shifts.
  • IBM – Moved from legacy hardware to cloud and AI services over the past decade, using partnerships and hybrid infrastructure to reinvent its growth narrative.

IREN now joins this list at a moment when AI infrastructure demand is booming—but capital markets patience is thinning. Whether it becomes a case study in smart reinvention or costly overreach may hinge on what it delivers this earnings season.

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Crypto World

Ketman Project Identifies 100 North Korean IT Workers Working in Web3

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Ketman Project Identifies 100 North Korean IT Workers Working in Web3

The Ketman Project, funded by an Ethereum Foundation stipend, identified 100 North Korean IT workers and alerted about 53 projects employing DPRK operatives.

The Ethereum Foundation said it funded a six-month project that exposed 100 North Korean operatives who had infiltrated Web3 companies under fake identities.

The foundation on Thursday shared a recap of its ETH Rangers program, which was launched in late 2024 to provide “stipends for individuals doing public goods security work” within the ecosystem.

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One of the recipients used the capital to build the Ketman Project to focus on investigating “fake developers” embedded within crypto, particularly operatives from the People’s Republic of Korea.

During the six-month stipend period, the Ketman Project identified “100 different DPRK IT workers operating within Web3 organizations” and reached out to about 53 projects to alert them about having potentially employed active DPRK operatives.

“This work directly addresses one of the most pressing operational security threats facing the Ethereum ecosystem today,” the Ethereum Foundation said.

North Korean operatives have been plaguing the crypto sector, leading to billions worth of crypto stolen over the years. One of the highest-profile hacking groups from North Korea is known as the Lazarus Group.

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Ketman Project website articles on DPRK operatives. Source: Ketman Project

The Ethereum Foundation did not go into detail about how the Ketman Project was able to identify the DPRK operatives. However, the project’s website has an extensive range of articles explaining the types of “tactics, behaviors and operational patterns” the operatives deploy.

Related: CIA to integrate AI ‘co-workers’ to process intelligence, catch spies

They include technical red flags such as reusing avatars and profile metadata across multiple GitHub accounts, exposing unlinked email addresses during accidental screen sharing, and displaying default language settings, such as Russian, that contradict their claimed nationality.

Alongside identifying North Korean operatives, the Ketman Project also developed an open-source detection tool to identify suspicious GitHub activity and co-authored an industry-standard framework for identifying DPRK IT workers in partnership with blockchain-focused nonprofit organization the Security Alliance.

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