IREN Deepens NVIDIA Partnership With $3.4 Billion AI Cloud Agreement

IREN signed a five-year, $3.4 billion AI cloud contract with NVIDIA while deepening a broader strategic partnership that could see the chipmaker invest as much as $2.1 billion into the data center operator, underscoring how Bitcoin miners are increasingly repositioning themselves as AI infrastructure providers.

The agreement, announced alongside IREN’s quarterly earnings on Thursday, will see the company provide managed GPU cloud services for NVIDIA’s internal AI and research workloads using air-cooled Blackwell systems deployed across roughly 60 megawatts of existing capacity at IREN’s Childress, Texas campus.

Unlike many recent AI infrastructure deals centered on leasing powered shell capacity or bare-metal compute, the NVIDIA agreement includes orchestration and cluster management software delivered in collaboration with Mirantis, the cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes software company IREN agreed to acquire earlier this week.

The contract is expected to ramp beginning in early 2027.

As part of a broader strategic partnership, NVIDIA also received a five-year right to purchase up to 30 million IREN shares at $70 apiece, representing a potential $2.1 billion equity investment if fully exercised and subject to certain conditions.

The partnership expands NVIDIA’s reach deeper into the emerging ecosystem of former Bitcoin mining companies converting power-heavy infrastructure into AI compute campuses. IREN has increasingly accelerated that transition over the past year, positioning its large-scale power portfolio and existing data center footprint as key assets amid tightening global AI compute supply.

“The world is structurally short compute, and the bottleneck is delivered data center and GPU capacity,” IREN co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts said in the earnings release.

The company said it now has a 5-gigawatt global development pipeline tied to the NVIDIA partnership, including future expansions across Texas, Spain and Australia.

IREN’s existing AI cloud business already includes a previously announced $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft tied to liquid-cooled GPU deployments at Childress. The company said Horizon 1 through 4 facilities remain on track for delivery by the end of 2026, with operational capacity fully contracted.

The company is also developing additional 2027 capacity expansions including Childress Horizons 5 and 6 as well as the initial phase of its Sweetwater 1 campus in Texas. Earlier this month, IREN announced the successful energization of the 1.4-gigawatt Sweetwater 1 substation, marking a key milestone for its broader 2-gigawatt Sweetwater development.

IREN said it currently has $3.1 billion in annualized recurring revenue under contract and is targeting $3.7 billion by the end of calendar 2026.

The company’s expansion plans increasingly extend beyond the U.S. Following its acquisition of Nostrum, IREN said it added 490 megawatts of secured power capacity in Spain alongside a broader European development pipeline.

Quarterly results reflected the financial impact of IREN’s ongoing transition away from Bitcoin mining toward AI cloud infrastructure.

Revenue for the quarter ended March 31 fell to $144.8 million from $184.7 million in the prior quarter, while adjusted EBITDA declined to $59.5 million from $75.3 million. Net loss widened to $247.8 million from $155.4 million in the previous quarter.

The company attributed the decline primarily to lower Bitcoin prices and the decommissioning of mining hardware ahead of GPU installations, partially offset by growing AI cloud revenue.

IREN also recorded $140.4 million in non-cash impairment charges tied largely to retired mining hardware, highlighting the cost of converting legacy ASIC mining facilities into GPU-focused AI infrastructure.

The shift mirrors a broader trend across the Bitcoin mining sector, where operators with access to large-scale power infrastructure are increasingly pursuing hyperscale AI and cloud computing contracts to diversify away from the volatility of Bitcoin mining economics.