Bitcoin Miners Pivot to Data Center Operations Amid AI Boom

A new data center provider is coming to the market focused on power-dense computer applications, including AI and Bitcoin farming, and it is doing so in a way that lends itself to the demands of sustainable GPU computing.

Although Bitcoin mining and more traditional data center operations might seem like unlikely bedfellows, the high-capacity GPU infrastructure required for crypto-mining can easily be converted to serve the soaring demand for AI applications and infrastructure.

Indeed, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently extolling the need for dedicated ‘AI factories,’ and Bitcoin miner Core Scientific also announcing plans to convert its high-performance computing operations to AI, it seems that this trend will continue to unfold over the coming months.

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Iris Energy (IREN) has been focused on Bitcoin mining for the past five years, building five data centers in relatively remote locations (three in British Columbia and two in Texas) where land and renewable power are cheap and plentiful.

Once the data centers are paid off through crypto-mining operations, IREN has hundreds of megawatts of data centers built and ready for high-demand AI operations, Dan Roberts, CEO of IREN, tells Data Center Knowledge.

Roberts started IREN six years ago to design and construct purpose-built data centers for power-dense compute applications, like AI and Bitcoin mining.

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Putting data centers in a remote location rather than an urban setting makes for cheaper infrastructure, and according to Roberts, network connections are not a huge issue because you don’t need ultra-low latency for the types of applications these data centers run.