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IREN Limited (IREN) announced a landmark $9.7 bln five-year cloud-services contract with Microsoft (MSFT), granting MSFT access to cutting-edge NVIDIA (NVDA) GB300/Blackwell GPUs via IREN’s infrastructure. The deal, which also includes a separate $5.8 bln procurement agreement with Dell Technologies (DELL) to supply the hardware, has sent IREN’s shares launching to new highs and underscored the firm’s transformation into a serious AI-cloud platform player.

• IREN has surged by about 630% year-to-date, driven by the AI infrastructure narrative and major contract announcements. That meteoric rise has pushed its 1-year forward P/E ratio to a lofty 65x, reflecting elevated investor expectations.
• Under the MSFT deal, IREN will provide access to NVDA's GB300/Blackwell GPUs over five years; MSFT’s choice of IREN underscores IREN’s turnkey capability -- from power, cooling, datacenter shell through to GPU stack.
• This contract follows IREN’s October 7 announcement of several multi-year cloud contracts with AI companies (leveraging NVDA Blackwell GPUs) and its target to exceed $500 mln in annualized run-rate revenue by end of Q1 2026, based on approximately 23,000 GPUs currently operating or on order.
• Several catalysts are driving this growth: booming demand for AI training/inference infrastructure, constrained supply of next-gen GPUs and power/cooling capacity, and IREN’s vertically integrated model (renewable-powered grid capacity plus large data-center campus footprint) which positions it to scale cost-effectively.
• In parallel, MSFT reported that its 1Q26 capex surged to $34.9 bln, up from prior guidance of over $30 bln, and that FY26 capex will outpace FY25 -- reversing its earlier moderation plan. MSFT also plans to increase GPU/CPU spending sequentially in Q2 and boost its datacenter footprint and AI capacity (up roughly 80% this year, doubling over two years), all of which reinforces the tailwinds facing IREN as a provider of that infrastructure.

Briefing.com Analyst insight:

IREN’s transformation from mining/power-centric business into a high-performance AI-cloud infrastructure provider is being validated in real time with a marquee hyperscaler as an anchor tenant. The $9.7 bln deal with MSFT significantly de-risks IREN’s growth trajectory and anchors long-term GPU-demand visibility. That said, the stretched valuation (65× forward P/E) leaves little margin for execution missteps, delays or supply/cost inflation. Delivering on GPU deployment, meeting MSFT’s milestones, managing capex and power infrastructure risk are key to justifying the premium. For investors, IREN offers a compelling structural story if you believe the AI-compute boom is in early innings, but it’s not without risk given the scale and complexity of what’s required.