Iris Energy (IREN) announced on Tuesday that it is reviving its strategy around hosting high-performance computing (HPC) alongside bitcoin miners. This comes as interest in artificial intelligence (AI) continues to surge. Several miners, including Applied Digital Corporation (APLD), Crusoe Energy and Hut 8 Mining (HUT), have recently ventured into other types of compute. According to estimates, demand for data center space for AI is expected to reach $76 billion by 2028.
Significant time was invested in exploring a strategy for HPC about three to four years ago, including signing a strategic memorandum of understanding with Dell Technologies in March 2020 to test and develop potential data center solutions for energy intensive compute applications, including leveraging Dell Technologies’ HPC and artificial intelligence expertise, said Iris Energy.
Iris Energy plans to increase its data center capacity to 9.1 exahash/second (EH/s) by early 2024, from its current 5.6 EH/s. The miner has procured items with long lead times to expand to build out another 100 megawatt (MW) facility, which would bring its mining hashrate to 13.6 EH/s if filled with mining rigs, said the press release.
Miners’ access to cheap energy and data center infrastructure may make it seem like it would be easy for them to pivot to AI and cloud computing. However, the requirements of high-performance computing industries differ significantly from mining in terms of quality of operations, uptime, and customer service.