Mining brought in $28 million last quarter against $233 million a year earlier, and AI cloud work now supplies most of IREN's revenue. The company aims to substantially complete the transition by December 31 but expects immaterial mining to continue through 2027.
IREN expects to keep mining bitcoin into 2027, past the year-end finish line it had set for shutting the business down. In results for the quarter ended September 30, released on November 5, the company said it aims to “substantially complete this transition by December 31, 2026,” and expects mining operations it describes as immaterial to continue through calendar 2027.
That is a softer commitment than the one IREN gave in August, when it said it meant to finish decommissioning the mining fleet by the end of December. The gap matters less for revenue than for the question of when IREN stops being a bitcoin miner in any operational sense. On the quarter's own figures, most of that has already happened.
Mining revenue was $28 million, down 58 percent from $67 million in the June quarter and down 88 percent from $233 million in the same quarter a year earlier. IREN mined 402 bitcoin, against 2,039 a year earlier. Average operating hashrate fell to 8.8 exahashes per second from 45.3 a year earlier, measured on the same quarterly average basis. The company ended the quarter holding no bitcoin, because it liquidates production daily and converts it to cash, as it has since it began mining.
The replacement business is now carrying the company. AI cloud services supplied about $200 million of the $228 million in total revenue, up 182 percent from the prior quarter, and total revenue rose 66 percent sequentially. The net loss narrowed to $263 million from $684 million in the June quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure that excludes items including depreciation and impairment charges, rose to $66 million from $19 million. Both figures improved, but the adjusted measure leaves out much of what produced the loss.
The timing of the two lines is linked by how the contracts pay. Under IREN's own accounting policy, revenue on AI capacity generally begins only once a site is built and energized, the equipment installed and commissioned, performance testing finished and the customer has accepted the capacity. Each of those steps can slip a quarter, and mining has been the business covering costs while they are worked through. Shutting it down on a fixed date removes that cover, which is one explanation for a residual fleet still running next year.
The pattern is now common among listed miners rather than particular to IREN. Cipher reported mining revenue down 71 percent while its AI leases brought in $5.9 million, a far earlier stage of the same substitution. Hut 8 sold 2,148 bitcoin to fund $175 million of share buybacks and took all but about $2.6 million of its third-quarter revenue from its compute segment. What separates IREN is that it has named an end date instead of letting mining shrink as a share of a growing business.
The network has absorbed the withdrawal without difficulty. IREN's average operating hashrate fell by about 36 exahashes per second over the year on that quarterly basis, against a network whose seven-day average passed 1,000 exahashes per second in October for the first time since March. Difficulty rises as capacity returns, so each remaining operator earns less bitcoin per unit of hashrate, which is the pressure the miners staying in have to price.
IREN shares closed at $18.03 on November 5, down about 17 percent on the day, in a session that also took down AI and technology stocks more broadly. For the next year, bitcoin mining stays on IREN's books as a residual line rather than a business ending on December 31.
