Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, has struck a sweeping partnership with IREN, a former bitcoin mining company pivoting to artificial intelligence infrastructure, to deploy up to 5 gigawatts of AI data centre capacity across IREN's global pipeline.
As part of the deal, IREN issued Nvidia a five-year right to purchase up to 30 million ordinary shares at $70 apiece, giving the chipmaker the option to invest up to $2.1 billion in the company, subject to regulatory approval.
The partnership also includes a separate $3.4 billion AI cloud contract covering Nvidia's air-cooled Blackwell GPUs, which IREN plans to install across 60 megawatts of existing data centre space at its Childress facility in Texas, with customer ramp-up expected from early 2027.
Future deployments are expected to centre on IREN's 2-gigawatt Sweetwater campus, also in Texas, which the companies intend to serve as a flagship site for Nvidia's DSX architecture, a standardised design for large-scale AI compute facilities that Nvidia calls "AI factories".
Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder and chief executive, said deploying AI factory systems at scale requires deep integration across compute, networking, software, power and operations.
"IREN brings the scale and infrastructure expertise to help accelerate the buildout of next-generation AI infrastructure globally," Huang said. "Together, we are building for the age of AI."
IREN, formerly known as Iris Energy, began as a renewable-powered bitcoin mining operator before pivoting aggressively toward AI cloud services as demand for GPU compute capacity surged.
The company energised the 1.4-gigawatt first phase of its Sweetwater campus last week, connecting its high-voltage substation to the Texas ERCOT grid on schedule.
A second phase is expected to add a further 600 megawatts by 2028, bringing total campus capacity to 2 gigawatts.
IREN reported quarterly revenue of $144.8 million for the three months to 31 March, down 22% from the prior quarter as lower bitcoin prices and the removal of older mining hardware weighed on results.
The company posted a net loss of $247.8 million, reflecting the cost of its transition from cryptocurrency mining to AI infrastructure.
Daniel Roberts, IREN's co-founder and co-chief executive, said the world is "structurally short compute" and that delivered data centre and GPU capacity remains the binding constraint.
IREN now operates roughly 23,000 GPUs and has secured contracts for a significant portion of its fleet, with Microsoft among its major customers through a separate $9.7 billion agreement covering liquid-cooled data centres at Childress.
The company also announced a $625 million all-stock acquisition of Mirantis, a cloud infrastructure firm managing Kubernetes-based orchestration for more than 1,500 enterprise clients, in a move designed to strengthen its AI cloud delivery capabilities.
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One gigawatt of power capacity is sufficient to serve roughly 750,000 homes, placing the 5-gigawatt scope of the Nvidia partnership on an industrial scale rarely seen outside traditional utility infrastructure.
IREN shares rose roughly 10% in after-hours trading following the announcement, while Nvidia was nearly unchanged.
The recap
- NVIDIA and IREN announce strategic partnership on AI infrastructure deployment
- Partnership targets deployment of up to 5 gigawatts
- Companies say systems will be NVIDIA DSX-aligned, announcement says
