Iren shares fall as SemiAnalysis highlights data center reliability issues

Investing.com -- Shares of IREN Ltd (NASDAQ: IREN) fell over 6% in Wednesday trading following a series of critical social media posts from research firm SemiAnalysis, which reported severe user complaints regarding the infrastructure quality at the Bitcoin miner-turned-neocloud’s data center facilities.

According to posts published on X by SemiAnalysis, multiple neocloud customers and end users described Iren’s legacy operational sites in Prince George and Mackenzie, British Columbia, as the "worst in the industry." The research firm cited reports of multi-day power outages, network upgrade disruptions, storage failures, and severe air-quality control issues that triggered frequent link flaps and system errors. SemiAnalysis added that its own internal testing of Iren GPU capacity, sourced directly and through third-party resellers, confirmed widespread technical shortcomings across those initial locations.

The firm acknowledged, however, that Iren’s newer infrastructure builds appear to represent a significant operational upgrade. SemiAnalysis noted that upcoming sites in Childress and Sweetwater, Texas, exhibit far superior design standards, moving away from vulnerable N+0 power, cooling, and network configurations. It highlighted that Iren’s massive $2.1 billion investment from Nvidia should help ensure the company avoids cutting technical corners on future site buildouts.

Despite the prospective improvements in Texas, SemiAnalysis called on Iren to revise its public investor disclosures, urging the company to cease claiming that it provides fully managed cloud clusters. Pointing to Iren's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, where the company stated it owns and operates every layer of the technology stack, SemiAnalysis highlighted recent contrasting comments from Iren’s Chief Commercial Officer, who acknowledged that the firm currently has no live managed cloud services. SemiAnalysis advised Iren to concentrate on its bare-metal infrastructure, where underlying market demand remains robust.

The research firm currently places Iren in the “Not Recommended / Underperforming” tier of its ClusterMAX rankings, positioning the company well behind high-flying neocloud peers like CoreWeave Inc (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius Group NV (NASDAQ: NBIS), which hold top-tier Platinum ratings. The criticism underscores the execution risks facing former crypto miners as they attempt to repurpose legacy infrastructure for demanding high-performance AI workloads.

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