Microsoft Signs $9.7B IREN Deal, $7.9B UAE Investment

Microsoft announced two major moves to lock in AI compute: it pledged more than $7.9 billion through 2029 for UAE data centers, cloud services and staff in Abu Dhabi — including plans to nearly triple the number of Nvidia advanced chips it will operate there and to bring in equipment the U.S. has restricted. Separately, Microsoft signed an about $9.7 billion, five-year agreement with bitcoin-miner-turned-neocloud operator IREN for access to Nvidia GB300-based AI systems hosted at IREN’s Childress, Texas campus, a deal that includes roughly a 20% prepayment. IREN said it will buy $5.8 billion of GPUs and related gear from Dell Technologies and expects the Microsoft deal to generate nearly $1.9 billion in annualized revenue. The new hardware is to be deployed in phases next year to support large-scale, hundreds-of-megawatts compute capacity. The moves illustrate how Microsoft is using both direct investment and large leasing contracts with neoclouds to address a global GPU shortage and surging Azure AI demand.