A bitcoin miner signed a deal with Microsoft worth about $9.7 billion. Four years earlier it had gone public as Iris Energy, run by two Australian brothers. Daniel and William Roberts built data centers in places with cheap, clean power, such as British Columbia, where the grid ran almost entirely on hydro. They filled them with machines that mined bitcoin. When the company filed in 2021, bitcoin was near its peak and investors wanted miners that could claim green credentials.

Two Brothers and Cheap Power

Daniel and William Roberts founded the company in 2018 and serve as co-CEOs. They bought their first site in British Columbia in January 2020. The business was simple: secure power and land, build the buildings and electrical gear, and run mining machines around the clock. Owning the whole site gave them control over costs. That same infrastructure, it turned out, could house the graphics chips that AI companies were desperate to rent.

Renamed for a New Customer

Iris Energy priced its IPO at $28 a share on November 16, 2021, and listed on Nasdaq. Bitcoin crashed in 2022, and the stock fell to a fraction of its offering price. The company began running GPUs for AI customers and renamed itself IREN in 2024. In November 2025 it signed a contract with Microsoft worth about $9.7 billion for AI cloud capacity in Texas. IREN delivered the first phase in August 2026 and still trades on Nasdaq as IREN.

Cover: Cranes in an Iris Pond at Sunrise, Isoda Koryusai. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for cranes in an iris pond at sunrise (Iris Energy).