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IREN secures Spanish base for AI cloud

IREN has completed its acquisition of Spain’s Nostrum Group, giving the Sydney-based AI cloud operator its first European platform as demand for power-backed data centre capacity intensifies across the continent.

The deal, completed on 15 June after an agreement in early May, adds about 490MW of secured grid-connected power in Spain, alongside a development pipeline that IREN intends to fold into its global AI infrastructure build-out. Financial terms were not disclosed. Nostrum’s operations will continue under the IREN brand, with more than 50 employees in development, engineering, construction and operations joining the Nasdaq-listed group.

The transaction moves IREN beyond its core North American footprint at a time when access to electricity, land and fibre routes has become decisive in the AI cloud race. The company has built its pitch around vertically integrated sites, large-scale GPU clusters and renewable-backed power, presenting itself as a provider able to move faster than operators constrained by grid queues and construction backlogs.

Spain gives IREN a foothold in one of Europe’s more active emerging data centre markets. The country has a deep renewable power base, growing international connectivity and regions where large industrial loads can still be developed outside more saturated hubs such as Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. Spain’s electricity system generated 55.5 per cent of its power from renewables in 2025, rising to 56.6 per cent when self-consumption is included, while installed generation capacity reached 142.5GW after a 10GW addition of renewable power during the year.

IREN co-founder and co-chief executive Daniel Roberts described Spain as a compelling entry point for European AI infrastructure, citing renewables and fibre connectivity. Nostrum chief executive Gabriel Nebreda said the combination with IREN would allow the Spanish pipeline to be developed at the speed and scale needed by Europe’s expanding AI market.

Nostrum, legally Ingenostrum, S. L., was founded in 2009 as a renewable-energy engineering company before pivoting towards next-generation data centres. The business was backed in 2023 by Andera Infra, the green infrastructure arm of Andera Partners, and rebranded as Nostrum Group in 2025 as it placed data centres at the centre of its growth strategy. Its shift from solar project development to digital infrastructure reflects a wider convergence between energy developers and AI computing platforms.

The acquisition lifts IREN’s secured power portfolio to roughly 5GW, strengthening its ability to offer customers capacity in multiple regions. That spread is becoming more important as cloud clients seek to balance latency, data-sovereignty requirements, power availability and political scrutiny of AI infrastructure. Europe’s policy environment is also moving in that direction, with plans for AI factories, up to five AI gigafactories and measures designed to mobilise private investment in cloud and data centre capacity.

The deal follows rapid acceleration in IREN’s AI cloud business. Its five-year Microsoft agreement, valued at $9.7bn, involves large GPU clusters at the company’s Childress campus in Texas and is expected to provide 200MW of critical IT load when fully deployed. A separate agreement to buy Nvidia Blackwell systems from Dell for about $1.6bn is intended to support another major AI cloud services contract, with equipment expected to come online by early 2027.

IREN still carries the legacy of its origins in bitcoin mining. Latest quarterly filings showed AI Cloud Services revenue rising to $33.6mn for the three months ended 31 March from $3.6mn a year earlier, but the company also reported a $247.8mn net loss for the quarter, including impairment charges tied partly to mining assets and equipment displaced by its focus on AI cloud services. That underlines both the speed of the transition and the execution risk attached to building infrastructure ahead of contracted demand.

The European opportunity is large, but it is not frictionless. Global data centre electricity consumption stood at about 415TWh in 2024 and is projected to roughly double to about 945TWh by 2030, with Europe’s data centre electricity use expected to rise by more than 45TWh over the same period. Grid connections, permitting, water use, cooling efficiency and local acceptance are central to project economics.

For IREN, Nostrum offers something more valuable than a conventional acquisition target: pre-secured power in a market where grid access is increasingly scarce. The next test will be whether the company can convert that position into operational AI cloud capacity quickly enough to capture European demand while managing the financing, regulatory and energy-system pressures that now define the sector.
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