IREN Ltd (IREN) shares jumped more than 6.5% on Thursday after the company announced that Microsoft Corp (MSFT) had formally accepted Horizon 1, the first of four AI cloud computing facilities being built under a five-year, $9.7 billion cloud services agreement.<\/p>\n
The stock traded at $46.51 as of mid-session, extending gains that had pushed shares up as much as 10% earlier in the day. The acceptance marks a critical milestone in IREN’s transformation from a Bitcoin mining operation into a major AI infrastructure provider.<\/p>\n
Horizon 1, located at IREN’s Childress, Texas campus, delivers 50 megawatts of IT load capacity using direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology. The facility houses Nvidia Corp (NVDA) GB300 NVL72 systems, a high-performance computing platform designed for large-scale AI training and inference workloads.<\/p>\n
“Delivering Horizon 1 demonstrates the strength of our vertically integrated model and our ability to execute complex AI infrastructure projects at speed and scale,” said Daniel Roberts, IREN’s co-founder and co-CEO. Roberts added that the company looks forward to “building on this momentum with Microsoft” as the remaining Horizon deployments come online.<\/p>\n
Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft has a five-day window to test each GPU deployment against agreed criteria. Once accepted, the service term begins and IREN can start invoicing Microsoft on a monthly basis. The contract is expected to generate roughly $1.94 billion in annualized revenue once all four Horizon facilities are operational.<\/p>\n
Nvidia Certification Adds Credibility<\/p>\n
Separately, Nvidia granted Horizon 1 Exemplar Cloud status after testing the GB300 NVL72 deployment. The designation confirms that IREN’s infrastructure meets Nvidia’s requirements for supporting demanding AI workloads, potentially strengthening the company’s position when competing for additional enterprise and hyperscaler customers beyond its existing Microsoft agreement.<\/p>\n
The remaining three Horizon deployments, each also rated at 50MW, are scheduled for delivery later this year. Together, the four facilities will supply 200 megawatts of capacity under the Microsoft contract.<\/p>\n
IREN said it remains on track to reach 480MW of gross AI Cloud capacity by the end of 2026, with a longer-term target of 1.2 gigawatts in 2027. Management has previously stated a goal of exceeding $4 billion in AI Cloud annualized run-rate revenue by year-end, with approximately 85% already under contract.<\/p>\n
From Bitcoin Mining to AI Infrastructure<\/p>\n
The company’s pivot from Bitcoin mining is stark in its financials. IREN reported $511.5 million in Bitcoin mining revenue over the nine months through March, compared with just $58.3 million from AI Cloud services during the same period.<\/p>\n
The shift comes as Bitcoin trades near $63,500, roughly half its October 2025 record high. The original core market’s struggles have made the AI infrastructure buildout increasingly central to IREN’s investment thesis.<\/p>\n
The Microsoft deal requires approximately $5.8 billion in GPUs and related equipment purchased through Dell Technologies Inc (DELL). Microsoft is due to pay 20% of the contract value upfront across the four tranches, while IREN has secured $3.6 billion in GPU financing.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is convinced of the economics. Famed short-seller Jim Chanos has questioned the arrangement, warning that “this is a financing deal, with IREN taking all the risk.”<\/p>\n
The acceptance of Horizon 1 clears the first major execution hurdle, but Horizons 2 through 4 still need to be delivered later this year. Whether the returns justify the capital outlay remains an open question, but Thursday’s milestone demonstrated that a former Bitcoin miner can build infrastructure capable of powering the AI trade.<\/p>\n
IREN’s expansion is part of a broader industry shift, with other Bitcoin miners such as Core Scientific (CORZ), TeraWulf (WULF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) pursuing similar AI infrastructure strategies.<\/p>\n
Wall Street expects IREN to report a loss of $0.46 per share on revenue of $140 million when it releases earnings at the end of August. The stock has gained over 10% this year and more than doubled in the last 12 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IREN Ltd (IREN) shares jumped more than 6.5% on Thursday after the company announced that Microsoft Corp (MSFT)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,8263,68568,68566,725,68463,68565,20303,68567,320,7828,146,144,106],"class_list":["post-138967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-bitcoin","tag-childress","tag-daniel-roberts","tag-dell-technologies","tag-gb300-nvl72","tag-horizon-1","tag-iren-ltd","tag-jim-chanos","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-microsoft-corp","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}