By Adam Clark

Nvidia has added to its rapidly expanding roster of partners by striking an artificial-intelligence infrastructure deal with IREN.

The companies will collaborate to deploy five gigawatts of AI infrastructure across IREN's data centers.

As part of the deal, Nvidia has a five-year right to purchase 30 million IREN shares at $70 per share -- an investment valued at up to $2.1 billion. Meanwhile, IREN will get a five-year deal to provide Nvidia with access to cloud services worth around $3.4 billion in revenue.

Nvidia's investments in companies that purchase or rent its hardware have raised eyebrows among AI skeptics. However, Barron's has argued it could turn out to be a smart use of its surplus cash, meaning it isn't overly reliant on a few big chip customers and locking in demand for future generations of its AI processors.

"Many people make this circular payments argument as a cause for concern, but I think that this structure exists because the market demands it," said Bhupinder Singh, U.S. equity strategist and head of Thematic Research at J.P. Morgan, in a recent podcast. "This financing arrangement has always existed. For example, historically, industrials have done this as a part of their business model."

Nvidia has been very active in making investments across its supply chain in recent months, taking small stakes or options to invest in all of Corning, Marvell Technology, Lumentum, Coherent, CoreWeave, Nebius, Synopsys, and Nokia.

IREN was previously an Australian Bitcoin miner called Iris Energy before pivoting to AI computing as part of a wave of "neoclouds" building out cloud computing infrastructure. IREN builds and operates its own renewable-powered data centers.

IREN stock was up 11% in premarket trading Friday. The Nvidia deal appeared to outweigh disappointing earnings, as IREN reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $144.8 million, falling short of Wall Street's estimates of $220.2 million.

Nvidia shares were up 1.2% in premarket trading.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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May 08, 2026 05:40 ET (09:40 GMT)

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