IREN is pivoting from Bitcoin miner to data-center energy provider -- and one of the big beasts of artificial intelligence may be among its new customers.

Shares of IREN got a much-needed boost on Monday after a report said that Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude large-language model, had agreed a multi-year cloud deal with the company.

IREN stock jumped 3.9% to $36.57 ahead of the opening bell. It had dropped about 7% for the year through Friday's close, dragged down by falling cryptocurrency prices and worries about its costly AI shift.

The gains on Monday came after The Information reported Anthropic has an unannounced, multi-year deal with IREN as part of its effort to up the pace at which its data-center leases come online.

Anthropic and IREN didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Barron's.

It may well be the case that Anthropic is the AI partner IREN said it had signed a cloud contract with back in August, when the company reported its fiscal fourth quarter earnings.

"The headline is the new multiyear contract with a leading frontier AI lab," co-CEO Daniel Roberts told analysts at the time. "And to be clear, this is a new contract."

Anthropic wouldn't be the company's only major tech partner as it repurposes its Bitcoin mining sites to supply power to AI giants.

IREN agreed a $9.7 billion deal to sell AI cloud capacity to Microsoft last year. In May, it agreed to collaborate with Nvidia to deploy five gigawatts of AI infrastructure across IREN's data centers.