AI cloud firm Iren has signed a $1.6bn contract with Dell to acquire air-cooled Blackwell systems.

The hardware will be deployed across Iren's existing data centers in Childress, Texas, to enable the neocloud to meet a five-year $3.4bn AI cloud contract the company signed with Nvidia earlier this month.

The contract with Nvidia will see Iren provide the chip designer with access to 60MW of cloud capacity based on Nvidia hardware. Nvidia will also invest up to $2.1bn in Iren, funding the deployment of up to 5GW of Nvidia AI infrastructure across Iren's global data center pipeline.

The Blackwell systems from Dell are targeting commission by early 2027, at which point they will increase Iren's annualized revenue run-rate from $3.7bn to $4.4bn.

The $1.6bn deal with Dell covers GPUs, servers, storage, networking, ancillary equipment, integration services, and warranties, with payment terms structured on a post-shipment basis.

Daniel Roberts, co-founder & co-CEO of Iren, said: “Securing capacity and accelerating commissioning are our top priorities in a market where time-to-compute is everything. Hyperscalers, enterprises, and developers choose Iren as a partner because we own and control the full stack - the physical infrastructure, the compute, and the operational capability to deploy at scale.

"Our relationship with Dell ensures access to hardware at the scale and speed the market demands. Every deployment we complete makes the next one faster, and that compounding execution advantage is what we are building.”

Already this month, Iren has seen the first phase of its Sweetwater, Texas, data center campus energized and has acquired Spanish data center developer Nostrum.

Formerly known as Iris Energy, Iren is in the midst of a pivot away from cryptomining towards its AI cloud business. While it is still mining Bitcoin, the firm is winding down its mining operations and diverting cash flow to its AI business.

Iren is a cryptominer turned AI cloud provider with data centers located across Canada and the US. Currently, it has some 23,000 GPUs in its fleet, and in October said that contracts had been secured for around 11,000 of them. The company has data center sites live and in development across Texas (Childress, Sweetwater), Oklahoma (Kiowa), and British Columbia in Canada (Mackenzie, Prince George, and Canal Flats). The firm says its pipeline has now reached 5GW.

As well as Nvidia, Microsoft is a major customer of the neocloud.