Bitcoin miner IREN has officially entered the European market by completing the acquisition of Spanish data center developer Nostrum Group. The strategic transaction secures approximately 490 megawatts of grid-connected, renewable power in Spain, alongside a robust development pipeline and a team of 50 specialized engineering and operations professionals. This acquisition expands IREN’s global power footprint to 5 gigawatts, with the Spanish assets accounting for 10% of its total capacity.
The expansion targets growing European demand for AI infrastructure, leveraging Spain’s optimal combination of renewable energy and dense fiber connectivity. It represents a broader pivot within the mining sector, echoing moves by competitors like HIVE Digital in Sweden and Bitdeer in Norway, to insulate corporate balance sheets from mining difficulty spikes and volatile asset pricing by transitioning to predictable, contract-based AI compute revenue.
While mining remains IREN’s primary income driver, generating $111.2 million in the quarter ending March 31 compared to $33.6 million from AI cloud infrastructure, the compute segment is scaling rapidly, nearly doubling from $17.3 million the previous quarter. Analysts note that IREN could eventually phase out major portions of its core mining business to retrofit facilities for high-performance computing. With 150,000 advanced GPUs installed or on order, the company’s hardware pipeline is estimated to support a massive $3.7 billion annual revenue run rate.
