IREN acquires Nostrum, expands into Europe with AI cloud platform

IREN Limited, the company formerly known as Iris Energy, has closed its acquisition of Spanish data center developer Ingenostrum, S.L., marking the Nasdaq-listed firm’s first major foothold in Europe. The deal, announced on May 7 and completed on June 15, adds roughly 490 megawatts of secured, grid-connected power capacity in Spain to IREN’s growing portfolio.

From hash rates to GPU racks

The Nostrum acquisition pushes IREN’s total power portfolio to 5 gigawatts.

Ingenostrum is described as a next-generation data center developer, which in practical terms means it builds the kind of high-density facilities that AI training and inference workloads demand. Spain offers a combination of favorable regulations, renewable energy resources, and strong network connectivity that makes it an attractive base for this type of infrastructure.

IREN has been telegraphing this pivot for a while. The company has established partnerships with NVIDIA and made significant investments in GPU deployments, the computational backbone that powers everything from large language models to image generation.

Why Spain, why now

The 490 MW of secured power that Ingenostrum brings to the table is already grid-connected, meaning IREN doesn’t have to wait years for utility approvals and transmission line buildouts.

What this means for investors

The acquisition represents a clear inflection point in IREN’s business model. Investors who bought into the company as a Bitcoin mining play are now holding shares in what is rapidly becoming an AI infrastructure company that happens to have some mining operations on the side.

The contracted revenue pipeline that comes with AI cloud services should, in theory, reduce IREN’s earnings volatility compared to its mining-dependent past. Analysts tracking the company have noted this shift approvingly, viewing the pivot as a path toward more predictable cash flows.

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