JPMorgan lifts Cipher Mining to “overweight,” hikes Iren price target
The crypto-miner-turned-AI-data-center trade is back on Monday.
Cipher Digital and IREN both surged Monday, amid a recovery in the AI data center trade and favorable commentary from analysts at JPMorgan.
It was a pronounced change for these crypto miners turned AI computing power providers, which have been hammered this month both by the bitcoin-based crypto sell-off as well as the sudden jitters surrounding AI.
JPMorgan analysts published a note Monday revising their price targets and ratings on the sector, citing a “flurry of deal activity” that’s reinforced their views on the theme of crypto miners converting to high-performance computing (HPC) power providers, which has been a popular trade this year. They wrote:
“Since the end of September, IREN and CIFR have signed long-term (5-15 year) cloud and colocation deals across >600 critical IT MW totaling >$19bn in contracted revenue. As such, we have increased conviction miners will be able to convert more of their capacity to HPC use cases moving forward... Our price targets imply operators in our coverage universe (excluding MARA) convert ~35% of their approved power capacity to HPC use cases by [year-end 2026].”
The analysts, led by Reginald Smith, lifted their rating on Cipher Mining to “overweight” — essentially “buy” — and bumped their December 2026 price target for the stock to $18 from $12.
JPM analysts also raised their rating on another miner turned HPC provider, CleanSpark, to “overweight” from “neutral” and left their $14 price target unchanged.
Separately, they lifted their price target for IREN to $39 from $28. But they have left their “underweight” — basically “sell” — rating on the stock, due largely to high valuations.
