Goldman Sachs lifts Iris Energy target to $44 after strong earnings

Goldman Sachs raised its target on Iris Energy to $44 from $39 after the miner’s latest earnings and AI-contract announcements, but it kept a Neutral rating, a sign the bank is willing to pay up a little more for the story without chasing the stock. Michael Ng, who started coverage on Dec. 18, 2025 with the same Neutral call and a $39 target, is now giving IREN more value for its shift into AI infrastructure, while still stopping short of a bullish stance.

That caution matters because Iris Energy’s fiscal third quarter 2026 results were not clean on the numbers. The company reported revenue of $144.8 million after the market close on May 7, well below consensus near $219.7 million, and adjusted EPS came in around negative 25 cents to negative 30 cents, depending on the estimate. On a traditional miner read, that would have been enough to keep sentiment guarded. Instead, the market fixated on the company’s bigger strategic change.

IREN said it secured a $3.4 billion AI cloud contract and struck a strategic partnership with NVIDIA for up to 5 gigawatts of AI infrastructure. It also said its 2026 expansion to $3.7 billion in annual recurring revenue remained on track, while building toward 1.2 gigawatts of AI cloud capacity in 2027. The company added to that push with the acquisition of Nostrum Group on May 7 to expand into Europe and the purchase of Mirantis on May 5 to strengthen AI cloud delivery capabilities.

Goldman’s new target suggests the firm sees real improvement in the company’s operating momentum and monetization path, especially as IREN moves further away from a pure bitcoin-mining model and deeper into AI-adjacent compute. But the Neutral rating and the fact that the $44 target sits below the recent share price show the bank is not treating the stock like a clean rerating story. The shares closed at $61.20 on May 8, up 7.65% for the day, after swinging through a 52-week range of about $6.76 to $76.87.

That gap tells the story of where Goldman stands after earnings: more constructive on Iris Energy’s optionality, especially as AI demand reshapes the market for compute-heavy assets, but still cautious about paying today’s price for tomorrow’s buildout. Other firms, including Bernstein and H.C. Wainwright, also lifted their targets as the AI narrative gathered force, yet Goldman’s call suggests the market may already be moving faster than the fundamentals can fully justify.