IREN Rallies 11% on Sweetwater Energization Milestone Amid AI Power Race

Shares of IREN jumped 11% on Monday, outperforming other publicly traded Bitcoin miners after announcing the energization of its 1.4-gigawatt Sweetwater 1 data center site in Texas late Friday.

The stock led gains across the mining sector, where most peers traded up in the low single digits alongside a broader rebound in bitcoin and bitcoin-related equities. IREN said Friday that Sweetwater 1 had been successfully connected to the ERCOT grid through the energization of its high-voltage substation, a key step in bringing the broader 2 GW Sweetwater campus online.

The company said power delivery at the site will ramp progressively as construction and commissioning of data centers continue in phases.

“Delivering Sweetwater 1 substation energization on schedule reflects our disciplined execution, the strength of our supply chain relationships and the efficiency of our vertically integrated development model,” co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts said in a statement.

The announcement comes as investors increasingly scrutinize which digital infrastructure operators can actually secure and energize large-scale power capacity amid surging AI demand.

Across the industry, hyperscalers and AI cloud providers have committed hundreds of billions of dollars toward data center expansion. Still, many projects face delays tied to local community pushback, grid interconnection, transmission upgrades, and power procurement challenges.

IREN has been positioning Sweetwater as a major AI and cloud infrastructure campus in Texas, adding to a growing list of miners attempting to leverage existing energy expertise and large power footprints to participate in the AI infrastructure boom.