IREN’s AI Cloud Ambitions Under Pressure as GPU Lease Rates Tumble 30% and Meta Looms as Rival

Leasing rates for Nvidia's B200 chips drop 30% in three weeks as Meta plans to rent spare capacity and develop own AI chips, sending IREN shares 48% below record and near oversold territory.

Leasing rates for Nvidia’s B200 chips have plunged roughly 30% in just three weeks, a drop that threatens the business model of specialized AI cloud operators such as IREN. The slide comes as Meta signaled it may begin renting out spare computing capacity—a move that could flood a market already struggling to maintain pricing discipline.

IREN shares fell 2.67% on Friday to €35.60, extending a retreat that has left the stock nearly 48% below its November 2025 record of €68.61. Over twelve months the shares still show a gain of 144.4%, but the recent sell-off has erased almost all of that advance on a year-to-date basis: the stock is now down 2.39% from where it started 2026.

Meta’s enormous infrastructure push is the root cause of the current jitters. The social media giant plans to invest between $125 billion and $145 billion in data centers in 2026 alone, much of it dedicated to its own large language models such as the recently released Muse Spark 1.1. Analysts now worry that the resulting capacity surplus will be offered to third parties, directly competing with IREN and other so-called neocloud companies that rent out GPU time.

The price decline in leasing contracts for Nvidia’s B200 accelerator underscores how quickly sentiment has shifted. For IREN, which is in the middle of expanding its GPU fleet from 23,000 to 140,000 units by the end of 2026, the timing could hardly be worse. The company has a $9.7 billion contract with Microsoft that provides a stable revenue anchor, but beyond that relationship its customer base remains thin compared with some rivals.

The transformation that has taken IREN from a pure-play Bitcoin miner to an AI infrastructure provider is itself adding to the stock’s volatility. The annualized swing in the share price stands at a dizzying 91%, and the relative strength index of about 38 indicates the stock is approaching oversold territory—though not yet signaling a definitive reversal. The market capitalization now sits at €12.44 billion.

Financing the buildout has required aggressive use of convertible bonds and new debt, a capital-intensive strategy that demands strong future margins. Investors are watching for signs that the company can generate the $3.4 billion in annual recurring revenue it targets once the GPU expansion is complete. That goal presumes rental rates remain elevated—a bet that looks increasingly fragile as hyperscalers like Meta and Amazon pour money into their own chip development.

Meta’s plans add another layer of risk. The company intends to start mass production of its own AI chip, code-named “Iris,” in September 2026, which would reduce its dependence on external hardware and potentially lower the premium that specialized providers currently command for simple access to scarce GPUs.

The next litmus test comes on September 16, when IREN reports quarterly earnings. By then the market will want to see whether the company’s margins can withstand the mounting price pressure from both existing players and new entrants. If not, the recent pullback could prove to be more than a temporary pause.