IREN Secures Connection for 800MW AI Data Center in South Australia

IREN has signed a transmission connection agreement for a planned 800-megawatt data center campus in South Australia, marking the bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure developer’s first announced data center project in its home country.

The Nasdaq-listed company said Wednesday the agreement supports its proposed Bundey campus, located about 78 miles northeast of Adelaide. The deal secures high-voltage access into a utility substation through four 330-kilovolt feeder exits, which IREN said is expected to support as much as 800 MW of load without requiring network upgrades. IREN's stock price jumped 7% during pre-market trading hours on Wednesday.

The company expects to begin energizing the site from 2028, subject to regulatory approvals and conditions under the transmission connection agreement. IREN said it plans to begin early works and procurement in parallel with those approvals.

The announcement adds another large-scale project to IREN’s expanding AI data center pipeline as bitcoin miners and digital infrastructure companies race to secure power, land and grid access for artificial intelligence workloads. The 800 MW capacity would make the Bundey project one of the largest announced data center campuses in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the company.

IREN said the site benefits from submarine fiber connectivity into major regional demand centers, including Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. The company framed the project as a way to serve both regional and global AI demand while also expanding access to compute capacity in South Australia.

“South Australia offers what AI infrastructure at scale requires: abundant clean energy, the connectivity to serve the APAC region, and a State Government that understands the opportunity and is acting on it,” Daniel Roberts, IREN’s co-founder and co-chief executive officer, said in the announcement.

The project also underscores how access to transmission capacity is becoming a central competitive advantage for AI infrastructure developers. Power availability has emerged as one of the biggest bottlenecks for new data center development, particularly as hyperscalers and AI cloud providers seek campuses capable of supporting hundreds of megawatts of high-density compute.

IREN said South Australia’s grid targets reaching 100% net renewable energy by 2027, a factor that could help position the Bundey campus for customers seeking large-scale compute powered by cleaner electricity. The state has become one of the world’s most closely watched renewable-heavy grids, with high levels of wind and solar generation.

The proposed campus is expected to create more than 500 jobs during construction and more than 200 ongoing skilled roles, according to the company. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said the project could support regional employment and strengthen the state’s position as a technology and innovation hub for the Asia-Pacific region.

“Data centres are a significant economic opportunity, which can bring high-quality jobs, stronger renewable energy infrastructure, and new opportunities for regional communities,” Malinauskas said.

The Bundey announcement follows a broader strategic shift among bitcoin miners that are repositioning power portfolios for AI and high-performance computing. IREN, formerly known as Iris Energy, has been one of the sector’s more aggressive companies in marketing its access to large-scale power infrastructure for AI workloads, alongside its bitcoin mining operations.

For IREN, the South Australia project expands its development footprint beyond North America and gives the company a potential platform in the Asia-Pacific market, where AI demand is growing but large-scale data center capacity remains constrained by land, power and grid-access limitations.

Still, the project remains at an early stage. IREN said energization is expected from 2028 and that early works will proceed alongside regulatory approvals and other conditions. The company did not disclose a customer, estimated capital cost or financing structure for the Bundey campus.

The agreement nevertheless gives IREN a key piece of infrastructure control at a time when power access is increasingly determining which companies can convert AI demand into buildable data center capacity.