Ex-Banker Brothers Worth $850 Million After Microsoft AI Deal

2gi4h}e[ymj]21m76o1f4m2]_media_dl_1.png Bloomberg

Article content

(Bloomberg) — For a few years, Daniel and Will Roberts’ Bitcoin-mining venture was a wild ride. The former Macquarie Group Ltd. bankers took IREN Ltd. public in November 2021, just as the pandemic-fueled crypto mania peaked. 

Article content

The following year, the company’s shares plunged 96%, leaving the Australian brothers hanging on to their decimated stock. Eighteen months ago, they pivoted — steering the business away from crypto and toward the surging demand for data centers and computing power driving the artificial intelligence boom.

Article content

Article content

Article content

The move has paid off. This week IREN signed a roughly $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft Corp. to provide AI computing capacity. 

Article content

Article content

Daniel, 41, and Will, 35, are now worth a collective $846 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is valuing them for the first time. Shares in IREN, which the brothers founded in 2018 and was originally called Iris Energy, have risen more than 500% this year.

Article content

“We’ve always had a saying, it’s never as bad as it seems and it’s never as good as it seems,” Daniel said in an interview. “That’s the benefit of two brothers working together — we challenge each other, we analyze things to the nth degree, and we’re not afraid to say that if we’re wrong, we’re wrong. Let’s change what we’re doing. And so far it’s working.”

Article content

The five-year agreement will turn Microsoft into the Australian firm’s biggest customer using 10% of IREN’s total capacity. That leaves room for the infrastructure provider to sign more contracts and generate additional revenue. IREN owns data centers in Canada and the US, which are powered by renewable energy.

Article content

“It’s been a big weekend and it’s fantastic to knock it off,” Daniel said about the deal. “But the reality here is, it’s back into the office — we’ve still got a big job to do.”

Article content

Article content

Listen and follow The Bloomberg Australia Podcast on Apple, Spotify, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Article content

IREN is among the data center operators who specialize in advanced computing for AI. CoreWeave Inc., Nebius Group NV and Crusoe Inc. are all vying to provide computing power to large hyperscalers like Microsoft and AI companies such as OpenAI. Many of these suppliers, including IREN, began as Bitcoin mining operations and have diversified into AI.

Article content

The deal “marks a watershed moment,” for IREN’s identity, said Guojun He, Hong Kong Jockey Club Professor in Economics at the University of Hong Kong. “The Roberts brothers are increasingly seen as global AI infrastructure leaders rather than primarily crypto founders.”

Article content

The Matrix

Article content

For Daniel, the shift from Bitcoin mining to AI computing is a natural evolution — both, he says, are driven by society’s accelerating digitization and the huge amount of power and physical data centers needed to fuel that.

Article content

“In our seed investor meetings, we spoke a lot about movies like The Matrix, Ready Player One and Wreck-It Ralph,” the co-chief executive officer said. “Our view was the world was going online and it was going to drive this insatiable appetite for compute.”