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Most Influential: Will and Dan Roberts
The co-founders and co-CEOs of IREN Limited have transformed the bitcoin mining firm into an AI infrastructure powerhouse.
Updated Dec 18, 2025, 3:13 p.m. Published Dec 18, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
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Daniel and Will Roberts, co-founders and co-CEOs of IREN Limited (IREN), have positioned the company at the center of the AI infrastructure boom by transforming its bitcoin mining assets into high-performance data centers for artificial intelligence.
This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.
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Founded in 2018 as a renewable energy-powered bitcoin miner in Canada, IREN anticipated that the real opportunity would lie in supplying affordable, reliable compute for AI. That vision is now taking shape.
In full fiscal year 2025 (FY25), IREN tripled its operating capacity to 810MW, grew revenue 168% to $501 million, and reached a record 50 EH/s in bitcoin output.
IREN’s pivot into AI cloud services gained momentum with a $9.7 billion, five-year contract with Microsoft, which includes a 20% prepayment (about $1.9 billion) for GPU capacity at IREN’s Horizon 1 data center in Texas. The company is now targeting $3.4 billion in AI Cloud annualized run-rate revenue (ARR) by the end of 2026, supported by a planned 140,000 GPU buildout and a 2GW Sweetwater AI campus set for completion in 2027.
IREN shares had risen more than 500% in 2025, reflecting its evolution from bitcoin miner to AI powerhouse.
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