IREN said it has locked a five-year, $3.40 billion AI cloud contract with NVIDIA tied to Blackwell GPU deployments in Texas, and the partnership includes rights for NVIDIA to purchase 30 million IREN shares at $70.
The deal arrives as IREN guided to $3.70 billion in annual recurring revenue by year-end 2026 and said $3.10 billion of that ARR was already under contract.
The headline contract sits alongside an existing $9.70 billion agreement with Microsoft and comes as IREN’s AI Cloud Services revenue nearly doubled sequentially to $33.60 million in Q3 FY26. Still, the quarter exposed strains: total Q3 FY26 revenue was $144.80 million, missing the $219.29 million consensus, and the company reported a $247.80 million net loss.
Investors reacted with mixed signals. IREN shares closed at $47.74 on May 19, 2026, falling 5.39% that day; the stock is up 459% over the past year but down 15.59% over the past week and remains up 26.4% year to date within a 52-week range of $8.28 to $76.87.
Balance-sheet facts deepen the tension. IREN recorded $140.40 million in impairments on decommissioned mining hardware, posted negative free cash flow of $1.40 billion in the quarter, and carries $3.69 billion in convertible notes payable. The NVIDIA share purchase rights sit well above the May 19 close, creating a potential capital option only if the stock climbs toward the $70 strike.
IREN has been reshaping itself from its former identity as Iris Energy into a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company, securing land, power agreements, cooling systems and transmission connectivity across projects in Texas, British Columbia, Oklahoma, Spain and Australia. The company says it secured roughly 5 gigawatts of grid-connected capacity globally, has a 5GW secured power portfolio, and shows 1,210MW in build for 2027.
That physical footprint is the reason IREN’s leadership is selling the long view even as near-term numbers sag. In a lengthy X post on Friday, Daniel Roberts wrote that the NVIDIA agreement "further validates IREN's key role in the AI infrastructure ecosystem." He added blunt timelines: "If you wanted to start today and build a gigawatt AI factory, you are looking 2030 before you get the first compute online," and warned that utilities may take "18 to 24 months simply to determine whether a site has available power capacity."
Roberts framed the company’s strategy in layered terms: "AI demand grows exponentially. Infrastructure doesn’t," and "Layers 1 and 2 are where the overwhelming majority of IREN’s value is being created today," with "Layer 3 is where that advantage compounds further over time." Those comments underline the core friction here: IREN can sign multi-year compute deals, but turning those contracts into revenue depends on power, permits and capital that arrive far slower than software demand.
The most immediate test for IREN is converting secured demand into cash before its financing needs force tougher choices. The company’s guidance to $3.70 billion in ARR by year-end 2026 implies roughly $600 million of additional contracted ARR beyond the $3.10 billion IREN says is already under contract. Hitting that target while repairing cash flow and managing $3.69 billion of convertible notes will determine whether the NVIDIA deal is the start of sustainable scale or an expensive promise.
The NVIDIA cloud contract makes IREN a central supplier to a fast-growing AI stack, but the firm’s next moves—accelerating interconnections, reducing negative free cash flow and resolving its convertible debt profile—will decide if investors see the company as the infrastructure answer to AI demand or a stretched builder still waiting for power and payout.
