IREN Sweetwater

IREN · Sweetwater · Nolan County

IREN, a former bitcoin miner, owns the land, the power connection, the buildings and the GPUs at Sweetwater, and sells the compute itself. One public company holds every layer of a 2 GW campus fed by West Texas wind transmission.

Who holds each layer of the IREN Sweetwater campus WHO HOLDS EACH LAYER LAND AND SITE IREN POWER ERCOT grid, CREZ wind transmission BUILDINGS AND OPERATIONS IREN COMPUTE IREN-owned Nvidia GPUs TENANT IREN AI Cloud customers
Planned
2 GW
Power
ERCOT grid
Land
2,200 acres
Status
Under construction
County
Nolan
Sector
AI and data centers

Overview

A 2 GW Grid-Connected AI Cloud Hub in the West Texas Wind Corridor

The Sweetwater hub has two sites: Sweetwater 1 at 1,400 MW on about 1,700 acres, and Sweetwater 2 at 600 MW on about 500 acres. IREN energized the Sweetwater 1 high-voltage substation in May 2026 and is building 300 MW (gross) of data center capacity there for delivery in Q4 2027. Sweetwater 2 is expected to energize in 2028, with a direct fiber loop planned between the sites.

On Sept 8, 2026, IREN said ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) had conditionally included the full 2 GW hub as base load in Batch Zero, the first round of ERCOT's batch study process for large loads.

Profile
OperatorIREN Ltd (Nasdaq: IREN)
LocationNear Sweetwater, Nolan County
Distance from AustinAbout 230 mi NW
CapacitySweetwater 1: 1,400 MW; Sweetwater 2: 600 MW
LandAbout 2,200 acres across two sites
PowerERCOT grid; IREN reports renewable sourcing
First phase300 MW gross, delivery Q4 2027
Sweetwater 2Energization expected 2028
WorkloadIREN AI Cloud: training and inference
StatusUnder construction

Energy model

Sweetwater Draws on Wind Transmission Texas Built More Than a Decade Ago

Sweetwater runs on the ERCOT grid with no on-site generation. Its power advantage is transmission: the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) program, a roughly $7B set of lines the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) ordered and completed in the early 2010s to carry West Texas wind to eastern load centers. Nolan County sits in the middle of that wind fleet, near the Roscoe Wind Complex.

IREN reports renewable supply through clean sources or renewable energy certificates; it does not publish a site-level mix for Sweetwater. Large-load rules under Texas SB 6 (2025) govern how the hub connects. See ERCOT large load interconnection.

Deal structure

IREN Owns, Builds and Operates, Then Sells GPU Capacity Directly

IREN, formerly Iris Energy, is a Sydney-founded, Nasdaq-listed company moving from bitcoin mining to AI cloud services. It owns the land and the grid connection, builds the halls, buys the GPUs and sells managed GPU capacity to customers. No landlord, lessee or neocloud sits between IREN and its buyers, unlike the four-firm split at Hut 8 Beacon Point.

IREN's named customers sit at its Childress campus in Texas: a $9.7B Microsoft AI cloud contract (first 50 MW delivered August 2026) and a $3.4B, five-year Nvidia contract for about 60 MW. Nvidia also holds a five-year warrant for up to 30 million IREN shares at $70. In August 2026 IREN signed a multi-year contract with an unnamed frontier AI lab. IREN has not named a Sweetwater customer.

Constraints

Delivery Depends on ERCOT Approval and GPU Financing

ERCOT's Batch Zero classification is conditional and subject to further approval. IREN finances GPUs contract by contract; its Microsoft deployment used $3.6B of investment-grade GPU financing plus customer prepayments. The full 2 GW build depends on signing customers for Sweetwater capacity.

Record

Dataset Record

Sources
IREN (FY26 results, SEC filings, Sept 8 2026 release), Data Center Dynamics, Global Data Center Hub, Texas Data Center Watch, Nolan County reinvestment zone minutes
Last verified
October 2026