Nvidia’s ongoing efforts to build up AI infrastructure are advancing rapidly apace with a new partnership with data center operator IREN.
At the heart of the collaboration is an ambitious plan to deploy up to five gigawatts of infrastructure over time.
However, the agreement extends beyond that, with the chip giant also securing the right to invest up to $2.1 billion in IREN.
Nvidia explained how the companies will work together in a May 7 statement. The AI chip giant will combine its DSX AI architecture with IREN’s expertise in data center logistics to accelerate the rollout of large-scale AI factories.
IREN’s two-gigawatt facility in Sweetwater, Texas, has been identified as the main focus for activity and will serve as the flagship deployment for the DSX platform.
Nvidia’s potential investment, meanwhile, comes in the form of an option spanning five years to purchase up to 30 million shares of IREN stock at $70 per share, up to a maximum of $2.1 billion.
Meanwhile, in a separate deal that underscored the extent of the new partnership, IREN confirmed that it has agreed to provide access to managed GPU cloud services to Nvidia for a period of five years to cover its internal AI and research workloads.
This agreement includes air-cooled Blackwell platform systems to be deployed within approximately 60 megawatts of IREN’s data centers at its campus in Childress, Texas. The value of this specific contract reportedly is $3.4 billion.
IREN, based in Sydney, Australia, is one of a growing number of neoclouds that have come to prominence as tech giants scramble to secure ever more compute capacity. Nvidia already has deals in place with IREN rivals CoreWeave and Nebius.
IREN was founded in 2018 with an original focus on bitcoin mining but has recently pivoted toward AI infrastructure. In addition to the two Texas sites, it has four other data center locations in Oklahoma and British Columbia, Canada, in its North American portfolio.