Crypto Currents: IREN lands $3.4B Nvidia AI contract

Crypto infrastructure spending hit a new landmark Friday as a former bitcoin miner secured the sector’s largest-ever AI cloud contract, complete with a direct equity stake from Nvidia. Coinbase absorbed a double hit, a headline Q1 revenue miss and a multi-hour AWS-driven platform outage, while Block delivered a blowout earnings beat and TeraWulf closed a fresh $250M credit facility. Exodus also launched the first stablecoin purpose-built for autonomous AI agents. Stay up on the crypto news that matters with “Crypto Currents,” daily from The Fly. Join us at 2 PM ET for your essential briefing on the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency on FlyCast radio.

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IREN’S NVIDIA DEAL: IREN (IREN) announced after the close on May 7, a 5-year, $3.4B AI cloud services contract with Nvidia air-cooled Blackwell GPUs to be deployed within 60 MW of existing capacity at its Childress, Texas campus, with ramp beginning early 2027. As part of a broader 5GW strategic partnership, Nvidia received a 5-year right to purchase up to 30M IREN ordinary shares at $70 per share, representing a potential $2.1B equity stake, while total annualized recurring revenue under contract now stands at $3.1B targeting $3.7B by year-end.

Q3 revenue of $144.8M missed the $219.29M consensus, with the shortfall driven by a lower average bitcoin price combined with decommissioning of mining hardware ahead of GPU installation, partially offset by growth in AI Cloud revenue. Adjusted EBITDA decreased to $59.5M from $75.3M in the prior quarter. IREN also announced the acquisitions of Nostrum, adding 490 MW in Spain plus a GW-plus pipeline, and Mirantis, a software orchestration layer for the Nvidia contract, bringing its 2027 expansion build to 1,210 MW with cash on hand of $2.6B as of April 30.

COINBASE Q1 MISS AND OUTAGE: Coinbase AWS US-EAST-1 availability zone overheating incident, placing all markets in “Cancel Only” mode.

Despite the headline miss, Coinbase delivered its 13th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA at $303.3M, crypto trading market share reached an all-time high of 8.6%, and its Base L2 processed 62% of global on-chain stablecoin volume. The company guided for $50M-$60M in Q2 restructuring charges tied to its previously announced 14% workforce reduction, per the company’s investor relations page.

BLOCK AND AMERICAN BITCOIN: Block ABTC” style=””>(ABTC) posted a Q1 net loss driven largely by a non-cash mark-to-market adjustment on its bitcoin holdings required under FASB rules, on revenue of $62.12M vs. $78.32M in the prior quarter, even as the firm mined 817 bitcoin at a 47% discount to spot and grew its bitcoin reserve roughly 30% to 7,021 bitcoin from 5,401 at December 31. CEO Mike Ho said the underlying business was profitable after stripping out the non-cash adjustment, noting the company did not sell a single coin. Chief Strategy Officer Eric Trump added: “In just over eight months as a public company, we have become the 16th largest bitcoin holder globally and scaled to more than 28 exahash of capacity. The compounding is accelerating.”

TERAWULF AND MINER EARNINGS: TeraWulf per a company press release. The company also closed a $250M revolving credit facility and reiterated its 250-500 MW annual contracted capacity growth target. CEO Paul Prager said construction of CB-3 remains on schedule and Fluidstack hardware deployment is advancing in coordination with infrastructure delivery, adding the firm is “building a power-advantaged platform that we believe is increasingly differentiated in a market constrained by access to power.” Cango (CANG) separately disclosed it produced 230.04 bitcoin in April at an average cash cost of $68,061 per coin, with a bitcoin treasury of 1,057.46 bitcoin as of April 30.

AI AGENT STABLECOIN: Exodus Movement (SOL-USD) stablecoin built with MoonPay and an accompanying AgentKit SDK designed for autonomous AI agents, where each agent wallet can issue its own Visa (BTC-USD) was trading at $80,204.99, while ether (ETH-USD) was trading at $2,286.52, according to price data from TipRanks.