IREN to build 800MW AI campus in South Australia

IREN has signed a transmission connection agreement to build an 800-megawatt AI data center campus in Bundey, South Australia. The company intends the site to serve customers in Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan and aims to begin operations in 2028, subject to state and federal approvals.

The campus will connect to South Australia’s high-voltage transmission network and use local power supplies, including renewable generation, to support sustained GPU-heavy compute for AI training and inference.

The Bundey campus is IREN’s first Australian data center project. The company plans to tie the campus into the state grid to provide large-scale compute capacity for regional demand centers.

In recent months IREN signed a multibillion-dollar AI cloud agreement with Microsoft and formed a partnership with Nvidia for GPU infrastructure. The company secured $3.65 billion in A-rated financing tied to the Microsoft contract, which it intends to use to fund most GPU purchases under that agreement.

IREN said it will progress permitting and grid connection work ahead of a potential 2028 start date, pending regulatory clearances. South Australia’s transmission capacity and links to regional network routes were cited as factors in the site selection.

A market analyst estimated the Bundey project could add roughly $8 per share to IREN’s value, while noting the project is at an early stage. IREN’s shares rose about 4% to $69 in early trading after the announcement, close to its 12-month high of $76.87.

Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of IREN, commented that South Australia offers “abundant clean energy, the connectivity to serve the APAC region, and a State Government that understands the opportunity and is acting on it.”

IREN began as a bitcoin miner and has expanded into AI infrastructure and cloud services. Over the past year the company has focused on securing long-term customer contracts, technology partnerships and project financing to support large data center builds for AI workloads.