Today’s news that IREN has inked a USD9.7 billion ($14.8 billion) deal with Microsoft to supply AI cloud capacity is the latest milestone for the Sydney-based, Nasdaq-listed data centre company — and a reminder that the AI boom is still in its manic phase.
The company is part of a loose grouping of firms that have been slapped with the suitably sci-fi name ‘neocloud’, which is shorthand for specialised cloud providers built for AI and high-performance computing.
In practice, it usually means ex-crypto miners and data centre specialists on one side, and on the other, older enterprise players like Oracle and Dell who’ve suddenly discovered they too can flog pickaxes in a gold rush.
IREN — formerly Iris Energy — is in the first camp. The company, which we have covered extensively at Capital Brief, didn't set out to build an AI infrastructure empire. It built power-hungry, high-density, modular data centres next to renewable energy specifically to mine Bitcoin.
