Nvidia bets big on IREN with $2.1B AI infrastructure deal, shares jump 13%

Data center operator IREN saw its stock surge 13% in after-hours trading Thursday after announcing a major partnership with Nvidia. The deal will see the two companies deploy up to 5 gigawatts of Nvidia’s DSX-branded infrastructure designs across IREN’s global data center facilities, specifically built to handle heavy artificial intelligence workloads.

As part of the agreement, IREN granted Nvidia a five-year option to purchase up to 30 million shares of its ordinary stock at $70 per share. That gives the chip giant the right to invest up to $2.1 billion in the Australian firm. The move signals Nvidia’s growing interest in locking down infrastructure capacity for its AI hardware.

“AI factories are becoming foundational infrastructure for the global economy,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “Deploying these systems at scale requires deep integration across the full stack — compute, networking, software, power and operations.”

Nvidia has been aggressively pursuing similar multibillion-dollar purchase agreements with other companies, including Coherent, Lumentum, and most recently Corning. The IREN deal adds another piece to Nvidia’s strategy of securing end-to-end deployment capabilities for its customers.

Source: CNBC