IREN Limited has delivered and secured Microsoft's acceptance of Horizon 1, the first of four 50-megawatt AI cloud deployments at its Childress, Texas campus. The milestone activates the commercial phase of a five-year, $9.7 billion cloud services agreement signed in November 2025.
Horizon 1 is a direct-to-chip liquid-cooled facility running NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems. Following NVIDIA's testing, the deployment earned Exemplar Cloud status, a technical validation of performance and reliability for high-density AI workloads.
The four Horizon phases are designed to provide 200 megawatts of dedicated IT load for Microsoft by the end of 2026. Each tranche carries a 20% customer prepayment, a structure that helps fund the substantial upfront capital required for AI data center construction. IREN has a separate $5.8 billion equipment procurement agreement with Dell Technologies to supply the infrastructure for the four facilities.
After a standard five-day evaluation period, IREN can begin monthly invoicing for Horizon 1. At full buildout, the Microsoft contract is projected to generate approximately $1.94 billion in annualized run-rate revenue.
The delivery marks a concrete step in IREN's pivot from bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure. The company targets 480 megawatts of gross AI cloud capacity in 2026 and 1.2 gigawatts in 2027, up from roughly 3 megawatts of self-built capacity a year ago. As of June 30, IREN held approximately $7.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents.