Why Iren Stock Topped the Market on Thursday

IREN climbed nearly 3% Thursday after the company announced it delivered its first AI compute deployment to MSFT under a $9.7 billion five-year cloud services contract. The Horizon 1 facility in Texas represents the initial phase of a four-stage buildout.

NVDA certified the system architecture for the deployment, marking a key milestone in IREN's pivot from cryptocurrency mining to AI infrastructure. The company reaffirmed its capacity expansion targets: 480 megawatts by 2026 and 1.2 gigawatts by 2027.

The MSFT contract positions IREN as a direct beneficiary of hyperscaler demand for AI compute capacity. With three more deployment stages ahead under the existing agreement, the company has secured near-term revenue visibility while building out its power infrastructure footprint.