Former Bitcoin Miner IREN Completes First Milestone of $9.7 Billion Microsoft AI Contract

According to Cryptopolitan, former Bitcoin mining company IREN announced the completion of the first milestone of its $9.7 billion, five-year contract with Microsoft — the official delivery of the Horizon 1 facility located in Childress, Texas. The facility is 50 megawatts in scale, equipped with Nvidia GB300 systems and direct chip-level liquid cooling technology, and has received the Exemplar Cloud certification awarded by Nvidia. Under the contract terms, Microsoft will complete GPU acceptance verification within five days; upon approval, IREN can commence monthly billing, with expected annualized revenue of approximately $1.94 billion after all four Horizon facilities go online. IREN plans to complete the deployment of all four phases totaling 200 megawatts by 2026, expand AI cloud computing power to 1.2 gigawatts by 2027, simultaneously exit the Bitcoin mining business, and target a full-year AI cloud revenue run rate exceeding $4 billion.