Overview
- Microsoft formally accepted Horizon 1, a 50 MW deployment in Childress, Texas, on Monday, moving the site from construction to customer acceptance and enabling IREN to start monthly invoicing under the five‑year, $9.7 billion agreement.
- Horizon 1 uses direct‑to‑chip liquid cooling and runs NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 GPUs, and NVIDIA awarded the deployment Exemplar Cloud status after passing its performance benchmarks.
- The Microsoft deal covers four identical 50 MW phases aimed at 200 MW of dedicated capacity and reportedly included a roughly 20% prepayment for NVIDIA GPU capacity that reduces near‑term capital needs but does not change GAAP revenue recognition rules.
- IREN’s latest quarter showed $144.8 million in revenue, a 21.6% year‑over‑year decline, and a widened loss of $0.74 per share, yet the market reacted positively to the site acceptance and NVIDIA recognition with roughly a 9% jump in the stock and a consensus analyst price target near $83.
- Key near‑term risks include timely delivery and customer acceptance of Horizons 2–4, secure GPU supply and financing for additional racks, and IREN’s ability to scale cloud usage into GAAP revenue ahead of its year‑end capacity and ARR targets.