Microsoft today announced that it has signed a $9.7 billion purchase agreement for AI cloud capacity from Bitcoin miner turned neo-cloud company IREN.
The move marked one of the biggest commercial validations to date for the upcoming neo-cloud space, which refers to a group of data center companies that have evolved from Bitcoin mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Under the five-year agreement, Microsoft will have access to Nvidia GB300-based AI systems hosted in Texas.
IREN, once known for its large-scale Bitcoin mining operations, plans to buy $5.8 billion worth of GPUs from Dell Technologies, a deal it expects to generate nearly $1.9 billion in annual revenue.
The announcement sent IREN stock soaring more than 30% in premarket trading, extending its 500% rally this year fueled by the AI hardware boom.
Founded during the Bitcoin mining wave, IREN is working with peers like CoreWeave and Crusoe to redeploy energy-intensive infrastructure for AI workloads.
The deal shows that the miner’s once-unstable hardware fleet is increasingly being seen as a strategic computing asset bridging the gap between blockchain and AI.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has relied on leasing deals with these providers to meet the surge in demand for its Azure AI services amid a global GPU capacity shortage.
