Already a subscriber?Shares in US-listed, Australian-born bitcoin miner Iren are rallying, after a spectacular 95 per cent drop in value during the crypto winter, thanks to its ability to source cheap green power to run Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips in its data centres.
Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of Iren, said the company always planned to lock up land and computing power before it was needed.Founded by brothers and former Macquarie executives Dan and Will Roberts, Iren operates data centres in British Columbia and Texas that are powered by nearby renewable energy sources to mine bitcoin.racks of bitcoin ASICs with racks of Nvidia H100 chips. AI start-ups pay to remotely access Iren’s data centres to run and train their AI models on Nvidia GPUs.
“Given the multiple years, and risks, relating to planning new data centres, we believe there is significant risk that not all of the genAI chips being purchased over the next few years will be rapidly deployed,” they wrote. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brett Knoblauch this month lifted his target price for the stock from $US10 to $US23 because of higher bitcoin prices and Iren’s emerging AI revenue stream.“Bitcoin mining companies are in an advantageous spot because they already have data centres up and running with the electricity and grid requirements needed,” Mr Knoblauch wrote.