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Microsoft said today that it had signed a $9.7 billion purchase agreement for cloud AI capabilities from bitcoin miner-turned-neocloud company IREN.
The move marked one of the biggest commercial validations for the next sector of the neocloud – referring to a group of data center companies that have evolved from bitcoin mining into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Under the five-year contract, Microsoft will have access to Nvidia GB300-based AI systems hosted in Texas.
IREN, previously known for its large-scale Bitcoin mining operations, will buy $5.8 billion of GPUs from Dell Technologies and expects nearly $1.9 billion in annual revenue from the deal.
The announcement sent IREN shares up 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 deal is indicative of how miners’ once-volatile hardware fleets are increasingly seen as strategic computing assets, bridging the gap between blockchain and AI.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has relied on leasing contracts with such providers to meet growing demand for Azure AI services amid a global shortage of GPU capacity.
