Iris Energy (IREN) has joined a select group of publicly traded Bitcoin mining operations, including CleanSpark and Cango, in surpassing a substantial 50 exahash per second (EH/s) of installed computing power for mining.
The organization reported on Tuesday that their massive 750-megawatt facility located in Childress, Texas, is the primary contributor to this growth, with 650 MW currently online. IREN also indicated that this Texas site will be the initial location for a 50 MW data center featuring liquid cooling, designed to support AI applications. This AI-focused deployment is anticipated for the fourth quarter of 2025.
IREN’s rapid hashrate increase is happening amidst a period of significant growth among leading Bitcoin miners listed on U.S. stock exchanges. This collective expansion briefly pushed the total Bitcoin network hashrate to approximately 950 EH/s last month, before seasonal electrical curtailments led to a decrease to around 850 EH/s.
With the inclusion of IREN, the combined hashing power of major players such as MARA, CleanSpark, Cango, and IREN now exceeds 200 EH/s. This represents more than 20% of the total computational power supporting the Bitcoin network.
Having successfully achieved its 50 EH/s milestone, IREN stated they will now temporarily suspend further expansion of their mining operations. The company intends to re-allocate resources to the development of high-performance computing infrastructure specifically optimized for artificial intelligence workloads.
“Now that we’ve completed the planned mining expansion to 50 EH/s, our focus is shifting towards a new era. We’re dedicated to expanding AI infrastructure in high-growth computing sectors,” stated Daniel Roberts, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of IREN.
To finance this strategic shift, IREN recently obtained over $500 million through the issuance of convertible bonds. However, their high-performance computing division is still in its formative stages, with revenues totaling under $10 million for the nine-month period ending on March 31st.