TLDR
IREN mined 728 Bitcoin in July, surpassing MARA’s 703 BTC despite having a smaller hashrate
IREN shares soared 11.4% to $18.32 following the announcement, reaching a $4.11 billion market cap
IREN achieved 90% fleet utilization with an average hashrate of 45.4 EH/s compared to MARA’s 75% utilization
$2.3 million of IREN’s $86 million July revenue came from its expanding AI cloud business
Bitcoin’s hashrate climbed above 900 EH/s for the first time last month
Bitcoin mining company IREN Ltd has overtaken industry heavyweight MARA Holdings in monthly Bitcoin production for July 2025, causing IREN’s stock to jump over 11% in a single trading day. The Australian-based company reported mining 728 Bitcoin last month compared to MARA’s 703 BTC, despite operating with a smaller deployed hashrate.
IREN announced on Wednesday that it generated $86 million in total revenue for July, with $2.3 million coming from its growing artificial intelligence cloud services business. The company achieved this production with 50 exahashes per second (EH/s) of deployed hashrate, compared to MARA’s larger 58.9 EH/s capacity.
What makes IREN’s performance more impressive is its efficiency. The company maintained an average hashrate of 45.4 EH/s throughout July, representing over 90% fleet utilization. By comparison, MARA operated at just under 75% of its fleet capacity, with a realized hashrate of 43.94 EH/s.
The news pushed IREN shares up 11.4% to close Wednesday at $18.32. This price surge has increased IREN’s market capitalization to $4.11 billion, making it the second-highest valued public Bitcoin mining company. IREN has now overtaken both Riot Platforms and Core Scientific, trailing only MARA in market valuation.
IREN’s strong performance comes during a time of increasing mining difficulty. Bitcoin’s total network hashrate exceeded 900 EH/s for the first time in July, creating more competition among miners.
Diversification Beyond Bitcoin Mining
IREN is actively expanding into high-performance computing and AI services. The company reported $2.3 million in revenue from its AI cloud business in July, highlighting its diversification strategy beyond pure Bitcoin mining.
Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of IREN, stated the company is seeing “accelerating interest” in its Nvidia Blackwell GPUs designed for AI applications. IREN purchased 2,400 of these advanced GPUs in early July and has already received an initial delivery of 256 units.
“We delivered another month of record revenue of $86m and record hardware profits of $66m in July, supported by strong Bitcoin mining economics and continued demand for our AI Cloud services,” Roberts said in the announcement.
Roberts added that running Bitcoin mining rigs alongside GPUs “underscores the adaptability of our infrastructure and our ability to capture the market opportunity ahead.” This diversification stands in contrast to MARA, which has remained focused exclusively on Bitcoin mining without branching into computing services.
Bitcoin Treasury Holdings Competition
While IREN leads in mining production, MARA maintains its position as the second-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. MARA’s treasury has grown to 50,639 BTC, worth over $5.8 billion at current prices. This puts MARA behind only Michael Saylor’s Strategy in terms of corporate Bitcoin holdings.
Other mining companies are also building their Bitcoin treasuries. CleanSpark (CLSK) reported growing its holdings to over 12,700 self-mined Bitcoin, while Cipher Mining (CIFR) increased its treasury to 1,219 BTC in July.
MARA’s underperformance in July follows what had been a strong second quarter. The company reported a 64% year-over-year revenue increase to $238 million in Q2 2025. In June, MARA mined 950 BTC, its highest monthly production since the 2024 Bitcoin halving event.
IREN’s rise represents a remarkable turnaround from just one year ago. In mid-2024, short-selling firm Culper Research had declared IREN “wildly overvalued,” claiming the company talked a “big game” about high-performance computing without making sufficient investments to compete in AI.
Culper had mockingly compared IREN’s efforts to “competing to win the Monaco Grand Prix, but arriving at the track in a Toyota Prius.” Since that criticism, IREN shares initially fell from $12.31 to as low as $5.59 in April 2025, but have since rallied 227% to reach $18.32 over the past four months.
At press time, IREN was trading at $18.32, up over 11% for the day, while MARA traded at $15.91, up nearly 2%.
