Australian data centre and compute company Iren Ltd (NASDAQ: IREN) saw its share price climb to new all-time highs overnight, closing up more than 12% at US$68.13.
Everyone wants exposure to artificial intelligence (AI), but the real constraint is not ideas or algorithms. It is power and compute capacity.
Iren provides the tangible infrastructure needed to run those workloads. The company has now landed a US$9.7 billion contract with Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) and has a US$30.1 billion backlog of work ahead. Investors tracking power expansion and megawatt energisation may find more insight than those focused on software headlines.
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Powering up with cheap energy
At the heart of Iren's business model is a simple but powerful idea: secure the cheapest possible renewable energy and use it to run power-dense data centres.
The company began by using these data centres to mine Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), a business where electricity cost defines competitiveness. With an average cost of just US$0.033 per kilowatt-hour, Iren ranks among the lowest-cost operators globally. By building facilities in areas with abundant or stranded power, such as hydro-rich British Columbia and wind-heavy Texas, the company has created structural advantages that rivals find difficult to replicate.
This model has produced a profitable foundation that now funds Iren's next chapter.
Pivot to AI cloud infrastructure
Iren is using profits from its Bitcoin operations to expand into AI cloud computing. The strategy is to self-fund new, liquid-cooled data centres and fill them with the latest Nvidia GPUs.
Today, Iren operates over 2,000 GPUs. By December 2025, that number is expected to rise to over 10,000, including thousands of Nvidia Blackwell B200 and B300 units. The company sees a long-term path to 20,000 GPUs, and potentially up to 60,000 in the years ahead.
Co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts said in August that demand for Iren's AI cloud services is accelerating as the company prepares for the arrival of new Blackwell GPUs.
The Microsoft and Dell deals
The company's latest announcement takes that strategy to a new level. Iren has signed a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar agreement with Microsoft to deliver AI cloud capacity.
The contract covers 200 megawatts (MW) of infrastructure over five years and includes a US$2 billion upfront prepayment. Dell Technologies Inc (NYSE: DELL) will supply hardware and integration support for the new AI supercluster.
Execution remains key
Building AI training data centres is expensive and complex. Iren expects the total cost to be around US$14 million to US$16 million per MW, reflecting higher prices for GPUs, networking components, and power infrastructure. The company has been clear that supply chain constraints are adding pressure, but these challenges are industry-wide rather than specific to Iren.
Despite those costs, the economics of the Microsoft contract appear favourable. Prepayments will reduce financing risk, while ownership of both land and power assets gives Iren more control over delivery and margins.
A win for Australian innovation
It is rare to see an Australian-founded company play such a meaningful role in global technology infrastructure.
Iren sits at the intersection of two powerful trends: renewable energy and artificial intelligence. While execution will be closely watched, this latest deal shows how an Australian-owned business can compete on the global stage by combining cost discipline, innovation, and strategic positioning.
