IREN, Cipher Mining (CIFR) Strike Multi-Billion AI Cloud Deals with Microsoft and Amazon
IREN Limited (NASDAQ: IREN) and Cipher Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:CIFR), Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI infrastructure providers, are making some hefty business moves today, and their stocks have been reflecting it.
IREN signed a five-year, $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft for GPU cloud computing services. The deal gives Microsoft access to NVIDIA GB300 GPUs managed by IREN at its Childress, Texas campus, with a phased deployment of GPU capacity throughout 2026.
The contract includes a 20% prepayment and positions IREN as a key hyperscaler partner for the first time.
Four new liquid-cooled data centers, Horizon 1 through Horizon 4, will support 200 megawatts of critical IT load, while a separate $5.8 billion agreement with Dell Technologies covers the purchase of GPUs, servers, and associated infrastructure.
CEO Daniel Roberts said the partnership could generate roughly $1.94 billion in annualized revenue once fully deployed. Following the announcement, IREN shares jumped more than 28% in pre-market trading.
The stock is now up 8% in intraday trading. IREN, which has seen its Nasdaq stock surge over 500% this year, joins other AI-focused “neocloud” providers, many of which originated in cryptocurrency mining.
Cipher Mining’s deal with Amazon
Meanwhile, Cipher Mining secured a $5.5 billion, 15-year lease agreement with Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) to provide turnkey space and power for AI workloads.
Cipher will deliver 300 megawatts of capacity in 2026 through air- and liquid-cooled facilities in two phases, with rent starting in August 2026. Additionally, the company announced a joint venture to develop a 1-gigawatt site named “Colchis” in West Texas, in which it will hold roughly 95% equity.
Combined with prior deals with Fluidstack and Google, Cipher’s AI hosting contracts now represent approximately $8.5 billion in lease payments.
Cipher shares rose 15% in pre-market trading following the news. The stock is now up 14% in intraday trading.
Bitcoin mining success with an AI twist
Bitcoin mining and crypto infrastructure stocks have seen a big rally over the past six months, and IREN Limited is a standout example.
Investors have rewarded companies that can combine traditional bitcoin mining with scalable, revenue-generating AI or data-center services.
In IREN’s case, the stock’s recent surge comes after a major GPU expansion and analyst upgrades, and now this new Microsoft news is helping boost the price.
This reflects a wider market appetite for miners that offer optionality: steady bitcoin cash flows to fund new ventures, while also positioning for high-growth technology trends.
In essence, the past half-year has favored bitcoin-mining firms that can monetize excess power, land, and data-center capacity beyond mining.
The rally is less about bitcoin prices alone and more about miners evolving into hybrid tech infrastructure operators with diversified revenue streams.
This post IREN, Cipher Mining (CIFR) Strike Multi-Billion AI Cloud Deals with Microsoft and Amazon first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
