Microsoft said today that it had signed a $9.7 billion purchase agreement for AI cloud capabilities from bitcoin miner-turned-neocloud company IREN.
The move marked one of the biggest commercial validations yet for the emerging neocloud sector — referring to a group of data center companies that evolved from bitcoin mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Under the five-year contract, Microsoft will get access to Nvidia GB300-based AI systems hosted in Texas.
IREN, previously known for its major Bitcoin mining operations, will buy $5.8 billion worth of GPUs from Dell Technologies and expects nearly $1.9 billion in annual revenue from the deal.
The announcement sent IREN shares soaring more than 30% in premarket trading, extending a 500% rally this year, fueled by the AI hardware boom.
Founded during the Bitcoin mining wave, IREN joins peers like CoreWeave and Crusoe in reallocating energy-intensive infrastructure towards AI workloads.
The agreement is indicative of how miners’ once volatile hardware fleets are increasingly viewed as strategic computing assets, bridging the gap between blockchain and AI.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been leaning on leases with such providers to meet growing demand for Azure AI services amid a persistent global shortage of GPU capacity.
