Iris Energy signs $3.4 billion Nvidia deal

IREN said on May 7 that it signed a five-year AI infrastructure cloud services contract with NVIDIA valued at about $3.4 billion, adding one of the clearest examples yet of a bitcoin miner-turned-data-center operator locking in long-duration AI demand. The company said the work will be delivered from its Childress, Texas campus, where about 60 megawatts of existing data-center capacity will be fitted with air-cooled Blackwell platform systems for NVIDIA’s internal AI and research workloads. IREN said the service package includes managed GPU cloud services, orchestration and cluster management software, with Mirantis named as a collaborator. The deal did not arrive on its own. NVIDIA and IREN also announced a broader strategic partnership in early May to accelerate deployment of up to 5 gigawatts of AI infrastructure across IREN’s global pipeline, and IREN granted NVIDIA a five-year right to buy up to 30 million ordinary shares at $70 each, a potential $2.1 billion investment if fully exercised. (iren.gcs-web.com) ### Where exactly does the $3.4 billion contract sit inside the broader partnership? May 7 is the date of the cloud-services contract announcement, while May 6-8 filings and releases outline a wider commercial relationship between the two companies. The $3.4 billion piece is the operating contract: IREN will provide managed GPU cloud services to NVIDIA over five years. The separate strategic partnership covers future AI-factory buildouts across IREN’s sites and includes the warrant package. (investor.nvidia.com) NVIDIA said the broader partnership is intended to combine its DSX AI factory architecture with IREN’s power, land, data-center and infrastructure operations. CNBC, citing the company announcement, reported the arrangement spans IREN facilities globally. (iren.gcs-web.com) ### What is NVIDIA actually buying from IREN? The contract is for managed GPU cloud services, not just rack space or electricity. IREN said NVIDIA will use the capacity for internal AI and research workloads, and that the service includes orchestration and cluster management software delivered in collaboration with Mirantis. That wording matters because it places IREN further up the stack than a landlord model. (investor.nvidia.com) Daniel Roberts, IREN’s co-founder and co-chief executive, said in the company release that the contract showed IREN could deliver “fully managed cloud solutions, not just bare metal.” ### Why is the Childress, Texas site central to this deal? (iren.gcs-web.com) Childress is one of IREN’s established power campuses. Earlier SEC materials described the site as a 600-megawatt location in Texas, giving context for why the company could carve out about 60 megawatts for this NVIDIA deployment inside existing facilities. The May 7 release said the NVIDIA contract will be serviced within approximately 60 megawatts of IREN’s existing data centers at Childress. (iren.gcs-web.com) The company specified air-cooled Blackwell systems there, rather than the liquid-cooled GB200 NVL72 configuration NVIDIA markets for some other Blackwell deployments. ### What does the Blackwell detail tell investors and customers? (sec.gov) NVIDIA describes Blackwell as its latest AI architecture for generative AI and accelerated computing. IREN’s release did not specify the exact Blackwell product count, but it did say the deployment will use air-cooled Blackwell platform systems. That leaves open the precise hardware mix, but it confirms the contract is tied to current-generation NVIDIA AI infrastructure rather than older Hopper-era systems. (iren.gcs-web.com) Any more granular read on server count or revenue-per-GPU would be inference unless the companies disclose it later. ### What comes next, and where will the next hard details show up? (nvidia.com) May 14 SEC records show IREN filed an 8-K covering a material definitive agreement and related items after the announcements. Future detail is most likely to come through additional SEC filings, IREN investor releases, or NVIDIA partnership updates as deployment milestones at Childress move closer. (nvidia.com) The next concrete markers to watch are any disclosed ramp timetable for the 60-megawatt Childress buildout, any update on Mirantis’ role in the software stack, and any exercise activity tied to NVIDIA’s 30 million-share warrant. (iren.gcs-web.com) (sec.gov)