Bitcoin miner Iris Energy to boost hash rate to 9.1 EH/s

Bitcoin mining company Iris Energy announced plans to raise its own Bitcoin hash rate to 9.1 EH/s by early 2024.

$IREN today announced:
— 80MW Childress construction underway, target increase in potential data center capacity from 5.6 EH/s to ~9.1 EH/s by early 2024
— Long-lead items to unlock ~13.6 EH/s
— Prior HPC data center strategy revitalized
— Limited recourse financing update

— Iris Energy (@irisenergyco) June 20, 2023

The corresponding growth from the current operating hash rate 5.6 EH/s will enable the completion of the first phase of the data centre in Childress, Texas, with a capacity of 100 MW.

The company is considering expanding the facility by a further 100 MW. In total this would support roughly 13.6 EH/s in the long term. These plans are tied to the anticipated purchase of Bitmain Antminer S19 XP ASIC miners. Iris Energy is meanwhile monitoring the market for “the best opportunities” to acquire equipment.

The firm has also updated its strategy in high-performance computing (HPC). As part of diversifying this business line, the company has treated this area as a parallel to its core activity — mining. Over the past 3–4 years, Iris Energy has studied potential steps in this field, with Dell Technologies as a partner.

To develop HPC, Iris Energy decided to repurpose existing data centres for cryptocurrency mining, and to incorporate capacities from its planned facilities.

«The development in this sector continues to accelerate, including increases in compute power and demand for clean energy. Recent discussions with market participants have further confirmed the validity of earlier work and suggested that perhaps the right time has come to expand here», Iris Energy said.

As of May 31, the company had around $64 million in cash. According to Iris Energy, this capital, along with no debt and operating cash flow from existing mining operations, provides a basis to regard its financial position as sustainable.

«Looking ahead, we will continue to prioritise data-centre construction while maintaining flexibility on the timing of miner purchases, which depends on financing and market conditions,» the company said.

In November 2022, two Iris Energy subsidiaries received a default notice on total debt of $103 million. The subsidiaries were SPVs established to buy equipment under a security interest. The firm noted that the litigation is ongoing.

Recall that following the fourth quarter of 2022 Iris Energy posted a loss of $144 million.