IREN Dips Further After SemiAnalysis Flags Issues With Legacy British Columbia Data Centers: Retail Mood Drops

• SemiAnalysis cited reports of power outages, network disruptions, and other failures at IREN’s Prince George and Mackenzie sites.
• The research firm said IREN’s newer Texas facilities have stronger infrastructure.
• Retail sentiment dipped further in the ‘bearish’ zone.

IREN Ltd. (IREN) extended losses on Thursday after research firm SemiAnalysis raised concerns about the operational quality of the Bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure provider’s legacy data centers in British Columbia. 

The stock fell more than 6% in Wednesday trading and was down another 1.2% in Thursday premarket trading, weighing on retail sentiment.

SemiAnalysis Flags Legacy Site Issues

In a series of posts on X on Wednesday, SemiAnalysis said IREN said it had heard reports from multiple customers and end users about IREN’s sites in Prince George and Mackenzie, describing them as the “#1 worst site in the industry” according to users.

SemiAnalysis cited reports of multi-day power outages, network upgrades, storage failures and air-quality control problems that allegedly caused frequent network link flaps and system-level errors. 

SemiAnalysis, however, drew a distinction between IREN’s legacy infrastructure and its newer builds in Childress and Sweetwater, Texas.

The semiconductor research outlet said the new sites “look much better,” highlighting their move away from N+0 configurations for power, cooling and internet service providers. N+0 generally indicates a setup without redundant capacity, leaving infrastructure more exposed to failures or maintenance disruptions.

SemiAnalysis also pointed to Nvidia’s planned $2.1 billion investment in IREN, saying the funding should help the company avoid some of the technical compromises seen at its earlier facilities.

Retail View On IREN

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for IREN dipped further into the ‘bearish’ from a day earlier, although some traders were also hopeful for a rebound.

“$IREN one upset customer and people want to jump ship… and for all we know, it could possibly be politically motivated. Nvidia is backing Iren. This company will continue to grow and thrive,” one said.

IREN is the weakest performer in the neocloud group, which includes CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius (NBIS), with just a 2.4% year to date gain.

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