AI Cloud Firm IREN Upgrades to KPMG, Replacing Going Concern Auditor

When Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton signed off on IREN Limited's June 30, 2024 financial statements, it attached an explanatory paragraph expressing significant doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern. By November 27, 2025, IREN had handed RCGT a dismissal notice and installed KPMG LLP as its new independent registered public accounting firm.

The timing is not incidental. Twenty-four days earlier, IREN announced a $9.7 billion, five-year GPU cloud services contract with Microsoft. The Sydney-founded company, which rebranded from Iris Energy Limited in 2024 as it pivoted from Bitcoin mining toward AI cloud infrastructure, disclosed the auditor switch in a Form 8-K filed with the SEC the same day the appointment took effect. The board approved KPMG following a recommendation from the Audit and Risk Committee.

RCGT had served since May 19, 2023. IREN confirmed no disagreements with the firm on accounting principles, disclosure, or scope during fiscal years ended June 30, 2024 and June 30, 2025, and did not consult KPMG on any accounting matters before the switch. The sole reportable event in RCGT's tenure: a material weakness in internal controls over financial reporting, disclosed in IREN's FY2024 Form 20-F, the same filing that carried the going-concern qualifier.

For KPMG teams inheriting this engagement, the mandate is structurally complex. IREN is not a technology company that gradually added a crypto unit. It built to 50 exahashes per second of Bitcoin self-mining on 100% renewable energy, then executed one of the fastest pivots in the sector toward AI cloud infrastructure, all under public-market scrutiny.

That pivot creates layered audit risk. Revenue recognition alone spans Bitcoin mining, AI cloud services under customer contracts with Together AI, Fluidstack, and Fireworks AI, and a colocation business anchored by the Microsoft deal. The contract structure compounds the challenge: a five-year term with a 20% prepayment and NVIDIA GB300 GPUs deployed in phases at IREN's 750-megawatt Childress, Texas campus across four liquid-cooled data centers requires careful accounting for prepayment timing and milestone-based recognition. To source the hardware, IREN signed a separate approximately $5.8 billion agreement with Dell Technologies, placing a significant asset on the balance sheet whose carrying value must be stress-tested against rapid GPU depreciation cycles.

Energy cost allocation adds another pressure point. IREN's 3-gigawatt renewable grid portfolio spans North America; as the company shifts load from Bitcoin mining to AI compute, cost structure per megawatt must be reallocated consistently against a revenue base mid-transition. The company has noted AI workloads can generate two to three times the revenue per megawatt versus mining, a differential that must show up coherently in margin accounting.

The financial swing KPMG now audits is striking. Q1 FY2026 revenue hit $240.3 million, up 355% from $52.8 million a year earlier; net income reached $384.6 million against a prior-year loss of $51.7 million; adjusted EBITDA rose to $91.7 million, a 3,568% jump from just $2.5 million. In December 2025, IREN closed a $2.3 billion convertible notes offering, while targeting $3.4 billion in AI Cloud annualized run-rate revenue by the end of 2026 across 140,000 GPU deployments.

Analyst conviction is split. J.P. Morgan's Reggie Smith downgraded IREN to underweight with a $24 price target, warning the stock already priced in colocation commitments implying capital expenditure above $10 billion; bull-case targets reach $82. KPMG's engagement puts the firm at the center of that debate: auditing the credibility of a business that moved from going-concern doubt to a $9.7 billion Microsoft contract in just over a year.