IREN CEO: "Computing-Power Supply Cannot Keep Up with Demand"

[Financial News] Daniel Roberts, co-CEO of IREN Limited, a neocloud company partnered with NVIDIA, said, "Global computing-power supply may never catch up with demand for artificial intelligence (AI)."
According to the Financial Times (FT) on the 7th local time, Roberts said the boom in AI data-center construction is "fundamentally different" from past investment cycles. He added, "It is really difficult to imagine a scenario in which the supply curve overtakes the demand curve."
He explained, "This industry is unique in that every new unit of supply creates many times more additional demand," adding that the spread of AI agents and faster processing speeds will continue to increase computing consumption.
Goldman Sachs forecasts that U.S. data-center capacity will double from 2024 levels by the end of next year and more than triple by 2030, reaching approximately 125 gigawatts (GW).
IREN Limited is a latecomer neocloud company that the Roberts brothers, Daniel and William, founded in Sydney in 2018 as a Bitcoin-mining company called Iris Energy. It changed its name in 2024 and shifted into the AI cloud business.
In May, IREN Limited signed a five-year, $3.4 billion capacity-leasing agreement with NVIDIA, which secured the right to acquire a stake worth up to $2.1 billion at $70 per share. IREN Limited also signed a $9.7 billion computing-supply agreement with Microsoft last November.
IREN Limited's market capitalization has risen from its low of approximately $60 million at the end of 2022, when cryptocurrencies collapsed, to approximately $19 billion today. It is still smaller than rival neocloud companies such as CoreWeave, valued at approximately $95 billion, and Nebius, valued at approximately $50 billion.
 


[email protected] Lee Seok-woo, International Affairs Correspondent Reporter