IREN's Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy: From Bitcoin Mining to Tech Giants

IREN Limited, led by founders Daniel and Will Roberts, has undergone a profound transformation from bitcoin mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure, positioning investments in acceleration computing capacity at the core of its strategic business model. Starting in 2018 as a renewable energy-based mining company in Canada, IREN recognized early market trends and identified the real opportunity in providing cost-effective, reliable AI computing power.

Microsoft Partnership and Acceleration Computing Investments

A pivotal point in the company’s management strategy was the signing of a five-year partnership agreement with Microsoft, focusing on acceleration computing infrastructure. This comprehensive contract includes an approximately $1.9 billion prepayment for GPU capacity at the Horizon 1 data center in Texas. Based on this collaboration, IREN is developing the Sweetwater AI campus with a capacity of 2GW, aiming to complete the project with 140,000 GPUs by 2027.

The Sweetwater campus is envisioned as a strategic hub designed within the acceleration computing framework, targeting an annual revenue of $3.4 billion by the end of 2026. These figures reflect the scale of the massive investment in AI cloud services and demonstrate IREN’s determination to lead the sector.

Record Growth and Operational Expansion in Fiscal Year 2025

In fiscal year 2025, IREN tripled its operational capacity to 810MW and achieved revenue of $501 million, representing a 168% growth. Bitcoin production efficiency hit a record of 50 EH/s, confirming the company’s technical competence and success in scaling operations.

This operational achievement accelerated the deployment of acceleration computing investments and laid the foundation for the strategic partnership with Microsoft. The company successfully transitioned traditional mining assets into high-performance data centers, targeting more value-intensive and profitable segments.

Market Reputation and Stock Performance

The investment community has valued IREN’s strategic positioning, and the market has reflected this strongly. In 2025, the company’s stock appreciated by over 500%, indicating a clear market endorsement of the transformation from bitcoin mining to an AI technology company.

This performance serves as an indicator of the reliability of investments in acceleration computing and the partnership with a global technology leader like Microsoft. IREN’s strategy is being closely followed by the industry as a successful example of evolving from traditional crypto mining to advanced data center operations.