# IREN Signs $2.8 Billion AI Deals, Raises Revenue Target Past $4 Billion > Source: > Published: 2026-07-20 19:46:43+00:00 *IREN just told Wall Street it expects more than $4 billion a year in AI cloud revenue, up from a target of $3.7 billion, after signing $2.8 billion in new contracts with Microsoft and Nvidia.* Daniel and Will Roberts started IREN in 2018 in Sydney as a hydro-powered bitcoin miner running rigs out of Canada. On July 20, the brothers' company told investors it had signed $2.8 billion in new multi-year AI Cloud contracts, according to a statement distributed on GlobeNewswire. The customer list now includes Microsoft, Nvidia, Perplexity, Figure AI, Together AI, Fluidstack, Fireworks AI, Fal AI, Hume AI and one more AI developer IREN hasn't named publicly. Nine names, one still under wraps. That's on top of the five-year, $9.7 billion Microsoft contract IREN had already announced earlier this year. A month before, it looked left for dead. Now the new deals have pushed IREN to raise its year-end 2026 AI Cloud revenue target from $3.7 billion to more than $4 billion. Roughly 85% of that target is now backed by signed contracts. The stock did what you'd expect. Shares had fallen about 43% over the prior month and slipped below $33 before Monday's announcement hit the wire. Then it spiked. They jumped as much as 20% in early trading and closed more than 13% higher, according to the Motley Fool. That's a fast reversal for a stock that had been sliding since June. Look past the headline number and the contracts look sturdier than a typical hosting deal. IREN says the new agreements carry a weighted average term of about four years. Some of the new customers are prepaying roughly 45% of the GPU capital expenditure tied to their own deployments. That's not a customer testing the waters. That's a customer betting IREN will still be running racks of Nvidia chips four years from now, and paying cash up front to make sure the capacity actually gets built. Capacity, not demand, is the real constraint here. IREN expects 480 megawatts of AI Cloud capacity running by the end of 2026, up from about 3 megawatts a year earlier. It's targeting 1.2 gigawatts by 2027. Going from 3 megawatts to 480 in a single year is an aggressive build by any measure. It also happens to be exactly what Microsoft and Nvidia are paying for. ## Other Bitcoin Miners Are Racing to Do the Same IREN isn't running this play alone. Core Scientific walked away from a roughly $9 billion buyout offer from CoreWeave earlier this year and instead agreed to build six AI data centers it will lease to CoreWeave over 12 years, a deal projected to bring in close to $10 billion in revenue, according to reporting from Simply Wall St and Energy Media. Core Scientific is also raising $3.3 billion through a bond sale specifically to fund that build-out, CoinDesk reported. Cipher Mining has taken the same road under a new name, Cipher Digital, and is guiding to somewhere between $675 million and $900 million in AI hosting revenue this year. The pattern repeats because miners already hold the two things a data center needs most: power contracts and land. Securing a few hundred megawatts of grid capacity in Texas or upstate New York can take years through normal utility channels. Bitcoin miners already did that work, for a completely different reason, and now they're renting the power out instead of burning it on mining rigs. Frankly, that's the whole trade. You don't need to believe crypto mining has a future to see why Microsoft and Nvidia are writing checks to a former bitcoin miner instead of building from scratch. ## The Real Test Is Execution Whether IREN's $4 billion number holds up depends on execution, not appetite. Nvidia and Microsoft aren't short of alternatives if IREN's build falls behind schedule, and 480 megawatts in twelve months is a lot to deliver on time. That's the risk. But 85% of that revenue target is already under contract, with real prepayments attached, and that's a much harder number to wave away than a forecast. **Also read:** [Trump Administration Weighs a Ban on Chinese AI Models Like Kimi K3](https://startupfortune.com/trump-administration-weighs-a-ban-on-chinese-ai-models-like-kimi-k3/) • [Nvidia Pushes AI Agents Deeper Into 3D Design Tools at SIGGRAPH 2026](https://startupfortune.com/nvidia-pushes-ai-agents-deeper-into-3d-design-tools-at-siggraph-2026/) • [Moonshot's Bet on a Bigger Kimi K3 Is Paying Off in China's AI Race](https://startupfortune.com/moonshots-bet-on-a-bigger-kimi-k3-is-paying-off-in-chinas-ai-race/)