IREN (IREN) co-founder Daniel Roberts says the biggest bottleneck in artificial intelligence is no longer chips, but physical infrastructure like power, land, cooling, and data centers.
In a lengthy post on X, Roberts argued that AI demand grows exponentially while infrastructure does not. IREN’s strategy focuses on three layers: physical infrastructure (power, data centers), compute infrastructure (NVIDIA GPUs), and enterprise software. Roberts says the first two layers are where most value is created today.
The company, formerly Iris Energy, has expanded from bitcoin mining into AI infrastructure, securing roughly 5 gigawatts of grid-connected capacity globally across Texas, British Columbia, Oklahoma, Spain, and Australia. A key highlight is a recently announced five-year, $3.4 billion AI cloud contract tied to NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPU deployments in Texas.
Separately, WhiteFiber (WYFI) announced a five-year AI compute agreement worth over $160 million with an investment-grade customer in France, expanding its European footprint. Unlike IREN, which owns its infrastructure, WhiteFiber uses third-party data centers.
WYFI shares rose 22% Thursday and gained another 5% in Friday pre-market. IREN shares gained 10% on Thursday.