In brief
- AI cloud compute company IREN has signed a $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft.
- The deal will give Microsoft to access to Nvidia’s NVIDIA GB300 GPUs.
- A number of top tech companies have inked deals with data center firms in recent months.
IREN stock rocketed up after the former Bitcoin miner and data center company said it had inked a $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft in the latest transaction between a Magnificent Seven firm and crypto infrastructure provider.
Sydney, Australia-based IREN, which has pivoted to AI cloud computing, shot up to nearly $73 per share Monday morning New York time—a nearly 21% rise. IREN has since settled at around $67.30.
The deal will allow Microsoft to access to Nvidia’s NVIDIA GB300 GPUs as it presses ahead with its AI ambitions. Microsoft stock also rose on the news.
“This agreement not only validates IREN’s position as a trusted provider of AI Cloud services, but also opens access to a new customer segment among global hyperscalers,” IREN co-founder and CEO Daniel Roberts said in a statement.
The news came as Bitcoin miner Cipher Mining on Monday announced an approximately $5.5 billion, 15-year lease agreement with Amazon Web Services to provide turnkey space and power for AI workloads.
Cipher will deliver 300 MW of capacity in 2026, including both air and liquid cooling to the racks, a statement said. Nasdaq-listed Cipher’s stock rose on the news; it was recently trading about 22% higher.
Top tech companies are making deals with data center firms in a bid to snap up compute as demand for AI increases. Cipher in September signed a 10-year, roughly $3 billion high-performance computing colocation agreement with Fluidstack, backed by Google.
Google also in August said it was upping its stake in Bitcoin miner Terawulf by providing an incremental $1.4 billion backstop to support project-related debt financing—bringing its total stake to $3.2 billion.
In the Bitcoin mining world, companies use warehouses full of computers to process transactions on the crypto network. Because they’ve amassed so much computing power, some miners are pivoting their infrastructure to address growing AI demand.
Bitcoin was recently trading at $106,700, down 3.1% over the past 24 hours and more than 7% during the past week, according to crypto market data provider CoinGecko. In a Myriad prediction market, nearly 60% of respondents agree with crypto entrepreneur KBM who believe BTC will sink to $100,000 with the remainder agreeing with trader Mando, who thinks the asset’s next move will be to $120,000.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
