September 4: NeoCloud sector rallies in sync; CRWV, NBIS, IREN each rise ~6%, with lock-up expirations posing next pressure test

Shares in neocloud companies CoreWeave (CRWV), Nebius (NBIS), and IREN (IREN) all climbed about 6% on Friday afternoon as sentiment improved across the AI trade. The rally spread from chip stocks to cloud infrastructure firms, with momentum extending beyond hardware into the companies powering AI deployment.

The broader market movement reflected renewed confidence in the semiconductor space. Shares in AI chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel (INTC) rose about 5% Friday, buoyed by fresh deal activity from Nvidia. On Thursday, Nvidia announced its acquisition of Hugging Face, an AI startup, in a roughly $13 billion transaction. Rosenblatt Securities analyst Kevin Cassidy characterized the deal as Nvidia "continuing to use its balance sheet to maintain the health of the AI ecosystem as it rapidly expands."

Memory stocks also benefited from positive momentum. SanDisk (SNDK) rallied 11% following Lynx Research's bullish stance on Micron and improving DRAM and NAND memory prices.

Friday's gains in neocloud stocks came as analysts praised IREN's AI cloud business expansion. At the end of fiscal 2026 (June 30), IREN generated $128.8 million in AI cloud revenue, representing 687% year-over-year growth. Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani noted that IREN has "aggressively executed across its cloud business," while Citizens analyst Gregory Miller highlighted the earnings' demonstration of "platform scaling, increasing AI cloud contribution, and higher investment levels."

According to TipRanks' Stock Comparison tool, all three neocloud stocks carry a Moderate Buy consensus rating from Wall Street. IREN leads in upside potential, with an average price target of $75.67 suggesting approximately 69% upside ahead.