Bitcoin miner IREN ventures into AI with GPU pilot and Morgan Stanley’s steerage

Bitcoin miner IREN (previously generally known as Iris Vitality) is the newest crypto mining firm seeking to revenue from the synthetic intelligence market increase, based on its July 23 Analyst & Investor Day presentation.

The deliberate presentation reveals that the agency will launch a GPU pilot at its Childress website in Prince George.

This follows the miner’s July 16 appointment of banking big Morgan Stanley as its monetary advisor to judge monetization alternatives within the AI knowledge middle market.

Is IREN prepared for AI pivot?

This transfer comes lower than two weeks after brief vendor Culper Analysis questioned IREN’s capability to help the high-performance computer systems (HPC) important for generative AI.

In keeping with the brief vendor, IREN’s flagship Childress buildout lacks quite a few crucial options for HPC functions. It acknowledged:

“IREN talks a giant sport of its HPC plans, however in the end appears fully disinterested in truly doing what it takes to compete within the house. Look no additional than IREN’s personal financials: the Firm has spent lower than $1 million per MW to construct out its current footprint, and tells buyers it is going to full the Childress construct for the same sub- $1 million per MW determine. In the meantime, main operators, analysts, and specialists all verify that the true value to develop an HPC-ready knowledge middle is ~$10 to $20 million per MW.”

Nevertheless, Mathew Sigel, the pinnacle of digital belongings analysis at VanEck, mentioned IREN’s newest announcement instantly refutes “the Culper brief report which claimed the location will not be appropriate to AI/HPC on account of Lack of Energy Redundancy, Liquid Cooling and Backup Fiber.”

IREN couldn’t be instantly reached for remark as of press time.

Different miners advance in direction of AI

Whereas uncertainty surrounds IREN AI pivot efforts, different crypto mining firms are making strides of their AI journey as they search to diversify their earnings following the April halving occasion, which impacted their revenues.

Over the previous months, Bitcoin miner Core Scientific signed a 12-year take care of CoreWeave, an Nvidia-backed startup, that may generate greater than $1 billion in income. Additional, Hut 8 introduced it raised $150 million in debt from personal fairness agency Coatue to develop its AI knowledge middle portfolio.

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