IREN Vs Nebius: Which Neocloud Should You Buy and Why?

IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS | NBIS Price Prediction) just posted quarters that expose two very different neocloud playbooks. IREN is pivoting from Bitcoin mining into GPU hosting for NVIDIA and Microsoft. Nebius is scaling a born-cloud, full-stack AI platform with Meta as its anchor. Both are backed by NVIDIA equity, both are racing for gigawatts, and both want your capital for the same buildout wave.

GPU Hosting Carries IREN. Full Stack Carries Nebius.

IREN’s Q3 FY26 revenue came in at $144.80M, with AI Cloud Services at $33.6M after nearly doubling sequentially, while Bitcoin mining contributed $111.2M. The $247.80M net loss includes $140.4M in non-cash impairments as mining rigs are decommissioned. The forward book tells the real story: a 5-year $3.4B NVIDIA AI Cloud contract, a prior $9.7B Microsoft deal, and $3.1B of contracted ARR. CEO Daniel Roberts said “There are no idle GPUs”, and the Childress and Sweetwater sites are being wired for GB300 NVL72 and Vera Rubin racks.

Nebius took the opposite path. Q2 FY26 revenue hit $399.00M, up 279.6% YoY, with AI Cloud alone at $389.7M (+841%). Adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $129.5M, cost of revenue dropped to 26% of sales, and remaining performance obligations sit at $33.59B. The Meta agreement ($12B committed plus up to $15B flexible) anchors the business.

Physical Staying Power Vs. Software Margin Expansion

IREN owns the dirt: long-term physical staying power from Childress, Sweetwater, the Spanish Nostrum acquisition, and Australian assets. Nebius owns the stack: Aether 3.5, Token Factory, and the Tavily and Eigen AI Labs acquisitions push it toward software margin expansion. Volozh called the platform “world-class from the infrastructure layer all the way up to our inference and agentic capabilities.”

What Decides This Through 2026

Watch whether IREN can absorb the Microsoft Horizon 1 handoff and light up 150,000 GPUs without another impairment surprise. Watch Nebius for adjusted EBITDA margin drift toward the ~40% 2026 target, because the operating loss of $128M shows the model still burns cash at scale. Reddit chatter reflects the split: IREN sits in very_bearish territory as traders debate the pivot, while NBIS threads have leaned Very Bullish.

Nebius Screens Defensible Today, IREN for the Patient

On the data, Nebius screens more defensible near-term. The 163.99% YTD move prices in a lot, but positive EBITDA and a $33.59B RPO backlog anchor the underwriting case. IREN screens as a longer-duration turnaround setup with messier quarters. The 113.69% one-year gain reflects real hyperscaler validation, and the owned power base is hard to replicate. The key research variable for both: whether 2027 capex outpaces contracted revenue.

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