Microsoft announced today that it has signed a $9.7 billion purchase agreement for AI cloud capacity from bitcoin mining company turned neocloud IREN.
The move marked one of the biggest commercial validations yet for the future neocloud sector – referring to a group of data center companies that have evolved from Bitcoin mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Under the five-year contract, Microsoft will have access to Nvidia GB300-based AI systems hosted in Texas.
IREN, formerly known for its large-scale Bitcoin mining operations, will purchase $5.8 billion worth of GPUs from Dell Technologies and expects nearly $1.9 billion in annualized 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 redeploying energy-intensive infrastructure toward AI workloads.
The deal highlights how miners’ once-volatile hardware fleets are increasingly viewed as strategic compute assets, bridging the gap between blockchain and AI.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has relied on lease agreements with these vendors to meet growing demand for Azure AI services amid a persistent global shortage of GPU capacity.
