Iren S.p.A.

Microsoft has accepted the first 50 megawatts of AI cloud capacity from IREN at the Childress campus under a multibillion dollar contract. The deployment is designed for hyperscale AI workloads and forms part of Microsoft's buildout of next generation cloud infrastructure. IREN has received NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud status in connection with the project, alongside a sizable financing package to fund the build.

Microsoft announced it expects to achieve positive free cash flow in fiscal 2027, signaling that its heavy AI investments are sustainable without excessive debt. The company reported an 18% year-over-year revenue increase for its fiscal 2026 fourth quarter, driven largely by cloud computing, and shares surged 16%. Microsoft also revealed it is investing heavily in compute capacity, with Azure surpassing $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time, and noted that CPUs are becoming as important as GPUs for agentic AI workloads. The company has signed multi-year compute deals with neocloud providers Iren and Nebius, while competitors like Alphabet and Amazon have inked similar agreements with other firms.

Meta Platforms and Anthropic are in early-stage talks over a potential $10 billion compute deal spanning two years, according to an unnamed source. Neither company has confirmed the discussions, but the report has intensified concerns among neocloud investors that Meta’s planned entry into cloud infrastructure could disrupt the market. Meta is already building a 5-gigawatt data center in Louisiana and recently signed a five-year, $27 billion compute contract with Nebius, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company expects to build tens of gigawatts of AI infrastructure this decade. Analysts note that even if hyperscalers eventually reduce reliance on neoclouds, providers like Iren have shown they can diversify, with Iren securing $2.8 billion in new contracts from leading AI developers and raising its 2026 annual recurring revenue target to over $4 billion.

Nvidia can still generate strong long-term returns, but its $4.7 trillion market cap makes another 100-fold gain effectively impossible. To turn a $10,000 stake into $1 million, Nvidia would need to rise around 100-fold, implying a market cap north of $470 trillion—larger than every public company on Earth combined. A patient investor who puts $200,000 into Nvidia and watches it quintuple over a decade could arrive at a seven-figure holding. The company is evolving from a chipmaker into a financial backbone of the AI ecosystem, committing up to $100 billion to OpenAI’s infrastructure, investing $2 billion in optics maker Coherent, another $2 billion in cloud provider Nebius, and striking long-term U.S. manufacturing deals with Corning and data center operator Iren. Nvidia remains a good foundational portfolio holding, but investors seeking explosive, high-risk upside should look to smaller suppliers in optics, power, and cooling.