IREN shares surge on landmark AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia
Bitcoin miner IREN just locked in $13 billion from Microsoft and Nvidia by betting its cheap power on AI instead of crypto, turning a $69 million market cap into nearly $19 billion.
IREN didn’t just sign a deal with Nvidia. It proved that the real prize in the AI race isn’t more chips. It’s the electricity to run them. The former Bitcoin miner will provide Nvidia with $3.4 billion in managed GPU cloud services and handed the chip giant a five-year warrant to buy up to 30 million shares at $70 each, a stake potentially worth $2.1 billion. Shares jumped as much as 27 percent in after-hours trading.
This is the payoff for a pivot years in the making. IREN has secured roughly 5 gigawatts of AI infrastructure capacity, equivalent to the power needed for 3.7 million homes, all redirected from crypto mining to compute. Its total contracted revenue from Microsoft and Nvidia now tops $13 billion, a number that exceeds the company’s $18.86 billion market capitalization and gives investors something rare in infrastructure: genuine revenue visibility.
The advantage traces directly back to IREN’s crypto roots. Years spent locking down cheap, reliable power for Bitcoin mining left the company with 2.9 gigawatts of grid-connected capacity across North America. In a world where Nvidia can stamp out GPUs but cannot conjure gigawatts from thin air, that power portfolio is the asset Nvidia is really buying. The ERCOT large-load interconnection queue in Texas grew 300 percent in 2025 as hyperscalers scramble for the same finite resource. IREN got there first.
Bitcoin mining still produced $485 million in fiscal 2025 revenue, yet management has made clear the future lies in AI. Global AI infrastructure spending is forecast to hit $700 billion in 2026. Companies controlling the energy inputs are becoming kingmakers. IREN’s market cap tells the story: from $68.72 million in 2022 to $18.86 billion today, a 27,400 percent leap. A $1,000 investment at the crypto-winter low would now be worth roughly $275,000.
The warrant structure itself signals long-term alignment. Nvidia gains the right to buy in at $70; IREN bets its stock will trade well above that level for years. Both sides now have serious financial skin in a multi-year relationship. But execution is no small thing. Delivering 5 gigawatts means hitting construction schedules, permitting, and performance milestones embedded in those contracts. Rivals with deeper pockets are watching the same ERCOT queue.
The deeper signal is that stranded energy assets built for Bitcoin can be worth orders of magnitude more when aimed at AI workloads. IREN has supplied the proof of concept. The question now is how many other miners can replicate the pivot before the power window closes.
Original reporting: Crypto Briefing.
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