Microsoft Invests $9.7B in Australian AI Cloud with Iren

Microsoft Bolsters AI Compute Capacity with Major IREN Deal

Microsoft is aggressively working to expand its computational resources to satisfy the increasing demand for its artificial intelligence services from its customer base.

A significant agreement was announced on Monday, wherein the technology company, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, committed to a $9.7 billion, five-year contract with IREN, an Australian firm. This partnership is designed to secure additional cloud computing infrastructure specifically for AI applications.

Details of the Agreement

The contract will provide Microsoft with access to computing infrastructure utilizing Nvidia’s GB300 GPUs.

Deployment will occur in stages, concluding by 2026, at IREN’s facility located in Childress, Texas. This facility is projected to support a substantial 750 megawatts of power capacity.

IREN has also independently committed to purchasing GPUs and related equipment from Dell, totaling approximately $5.8 billion.

Recent Advancements in Microsoft’s AI Infrastructure

This new deal follows Microsoft’s recent unveiling of its inaugural production cluster featuring Nvidia’s GB300 NVL72 systems for Azure.

These systems are specifically engineered to optimize performance for reasoning models, agentic AI systems, and generative AI capable of handling multiple data types.

Furthermore, last month saw Microsoft enter into an agreement with Nscale to procure roughly 200,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs for deployment across three data centers in Europe and one within the United States.

IREN’s Transition to AI Workloads

Like companies such as CoreWeave, IREN initially focused on bitcoin mining.

However, the company quickly identified that its extensive GPU resources were more effectively utilized for AI-related tasks. This strategic shift has proven highly beneficial to IREN’s growth.

According to Bloomberg reports, Daniel Roberts, IREN’s CEO, anticipates that the Microsoft deal will account for roughly 10% of the company’s overall capacity.

He also projects that this partnership will generate approximately $1.94 billion in annual revenue.