IREN (IREN.US) Mysterious Customer Emerges? Anthropic Reportedly Signs Multi-Year Cloud Deal

Title context: IREN (IREN.US) Mysterious Customer Emerges? Anthropic Reportedly Signs Multi-Year Cloud Deal Text: Earlier reports indicated that Anthropic is the mysterious AI cloud customer mentioned by IREN Ltd. (IREN.US) on its earnings call several months ago, and IREN surged 9.29% in Sunday night trading. The Information published an analysis report on the economics of Anthropic's data center leases, detailing how the AI lab is pushing its cloud partners to accelerate the construction of new data centers. According to AI Weekly citing the report: "People familiar with the matter said Anthropic also has an undisclosed multi-year cloud agreement with IREN." The report noted that Anthropic's efforts to rapidly expand computing power are "increasingly relying on current and former Bitcoin miners such as Hut 8, TeraWulf, IREN, and Nscale." Neither Anthropic nor IREN commented on the partnership rumors. In August, IREN disclosed an agreement with a leading AI lab but did not reveal the customer's name. CEO Daniel Roberts said on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call: "First, on the customer side, the new multi-year cloud contracts include Cohere, Prometheus, Perplexity, Figure AI, Fal AI, and Higgsfield AI, as well as a leading frontier AI lab whose name we cannot disclose at this time." If Anthropic joins the customer list, it would significantly boost IREN and potentially strengthen its position as an AI cloud infrastructure provider amid surging computing demand. IREN: Traditional Data Centers Raise Concerns Over the past week, IREN's stock came under pressure after SemiAnalysis questioned the operational quality of the legacy data centers in British Columbia of this Bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure provider. SemiAnalysis said in a series of posts on X on Wednesday that it had heard reports from multiple customers and end users about IREN's Prince George and Mackenzie sites, with users describing them as "the worst sites in the industry." As of press time, IREN is the most trending ticker on Stocktwits, with retail sentiment leaning "bullish," and several traders expecting the stock to continue rising on Monday. One trader wrote: "IREN either has a deal the company needs to confirm, or this is just a pump." Another said: "Based on this blockbuster Anthropic news, IREN could be headed for a 20% up day. I went long from $36.75 in overnight trading, with my current trailing stop at $35.95." IREN is the weakest performer in the neocloud sector, which also includes CoreWeave (CRWV.US) and Nebius (NBIS.US). IREN shares have fallen nearly 7% year to date.