Microsoft inks $9.7B deal with Australia’s IREN for AI cloud capacity

Microsoft has secured a significant $9.7 billion, five-year contract with Australia-based IREN to expand its AI cloud computing capacity. This deal grants Microsoft access to advanced compute infrastructure equipped with Nvidia GB300 GPUs, which will be deployed in phases through 2026 at IREN’s facility in Childress, Texas, designed to support up to 750 megawatts of capacity. Separately, IREN is investing about $5.8 billion in GPUs and equipment from Dell to support this infrastructure expansion. The agreement follows Microsoft’s recent launch of AI models optimized for reasoning, agentic AI systems, and multi-modal generative AI, reflecting the company's efforts to meet growing demand for AI services. Microsoft has also previously acquired approximately 200,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs for data centers in Europe and the U.S. IREN, originally a bitcoin-mining firm, has pivoted successfully to AI workloads, leveraging its extensive GPU resources. CEO Daniel Roberts anticipates that the Microsoft contract will utilize only