IREN stock slipped about 5% on Wednesday afternoon after Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani noted the Australian AI cloud company “is behind on scale and building an enterprise business” when compared to neocloud rivals CoreWeave and Nebius.
The drop came as shares of CoreWeave, Nebius, and other neocloud providers also plunged following reports that Meta Platforms is building a cloud business to sell excess AI computing capacity, according to Bloomberg News.
Despite the criticism, Chhugani reaffirmed his Buy rating on IREN stock and maintained his $100 price target, implying more than 127% upside from current levels.
Bernstein’s latest research note compared how IREN stacks up against its neocloud competitors. Within the neocloud sector, IREN boasts the strongest profit margin because of its vertically integrated business model, which gives the company control over its entire supply chain—acquiring land assets, securing energy deals, building data centers, and operating its own GPU clusters.
However, Chhugani’s comment suggests that despite this structural advantage, IREN remains smaller and less developed than CoreWeave and Nebius in the enterprise AI cloud space, according to TipRanks. The analyst had argued in an earlier note that CoreWeave and Nebius generate more revenue per megawatt of contracted capacity than IREN does.
The neocloud sector faced broader headwinds on Wednesday. Meta’s announcement that it plans to develop a cloud infrastructure business to sell access to AI computing power and models spooked investors in specialized AI infrastructure providers. Meta has forecast capital expenditure of $125 billion to $145 billion in 2026, nearly double what it spent in 2025, according to Reuters and Bloomberg.
Chhugani ranks in the top 7% of more than 12,000 Wall Street analysts tracked on TipRanks. On IREN specifically, he has a 59% success rate and has generated an average return of 112.97% for investors from his ratings over the past 12 months.
On Wall Street, analysts maintain a Moderate Buy consensus rating for IREN stock, based on seven Buy ratings, two Holds, and one Sell issued over the past three months. The average price target of $79.93 suggests roughly 79% upside, according to TipRanks.
