IREN delivers first Microsoft AI cloud deployment under $9.7 billion contract

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IREN delivers first Microsoft AI cloud deployment

Highlights

IREN delivered Horizon 1, a 50-megawatt liquid-cooled Microsoft AI cloud deployment in Texas, as part of a $9.7 billion five-year contract signed in November 2025.
IREN targets 480 megawatts of AI cloud capacity in 2026 and 1.2 gigawatts by 2027, pivoting from bitcoin mining to meet rising power demand for AI and HPC data centers.
IREN secured a $3.65 billion debt package backed by the Microsoft contract, covering 96% of its $5.81 billion GPU spending, with investment-grade ratings from Fitch and DBRS.

Texas deployment plan moves forward

As reported by The Block, citing IREN in a company release, Horizon 1 is a 50-megawatt direct-to-chip liquid-cooled deployment at its Childress, Texas, campus, marking the first of four planned Horizon AI cloud installations for Microsoft.

IREN signed the five-year cloud service agreement with Microsoft in November 2025, with the full contract valued at $9.7 billion. The remaining Horizon 2 through 4 deployments are expected later this year, and the four phases together will total 200 megawatts of IT capacity using Nvidia GB300 GPUs.

The company also said Horizon 1 received Nvidia Exemplar Cloud status, a designation for cloud providers that meet Nvidia's standards for AI workload performance and reliability. Co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts said the delivery shows IREN's ability to execute complex AI infrastructure projects at speed and scale.

AI expansion reshapes IREN growth strategy

IREN is targeting 480 megawatts of AI cloud capacity in 2026 and 1.2 gigawatts by 2027 as it continues to pivot away from its roots in bitcoin mining. The strategy mirrors a wider industry move by legacy crypto miners seeking to tap strong demand for power-intensive AI and high-performance computing data center capacity.

In June, IREN secured a $3.65 billion debt package backed by its Microsoft contract to help fund GPUs for the buildout. The company said at the time that the financing covered 96% of the $5.81 billion in GPU spending tied to the agreement, and the package received investment-grade ratings of A from Fitch and A(low) from DBRS.

IREN shares were up 2.6% at $45.22 on Monday afternoon after earlier reaching $46.50. Even with the Microsoft-related contracts, the stock is up less than 6% year to date.

Our earlier coverage of the SEC’s recent staff guidance examined how it could open the door to more capital-efficient financing structures for AI data centers, including Nvidia-linked agreements with major private equity backers. We noted that by treating certain data center debt as exempt from securitization risk-retention rules, sponsors may be able to reduce required equity and structure funding more flexibly as demand for computing capacity accelerates.

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