Australian Bitcoin Firm Iris Energy Expanding in Canal Flats
Australian Bitcoin-focused data center business Iris Energy (offices in Sydney, Vancouver, and London) has doubled a fundraising round to A$40 million ($31 million) ahead of a planned initial public offering. Iris expanded the offering in mid-March, 2021 following a A$13 million commitment from Platinum Asset Management. The company is planning its first-time share sale in mid-2021. Iris Energy’s flagship project is located in Canal Flats, where it currently operates 9MW and expansion underway to 30MW of power (with 130MW+ total expansion potential) – a high-performance data centre platform with access to low-cost renewable energy. At 30MW, the Canal Flats operation would be the 5th biggest data centre in Canada. There are currently 20 FT positions on-site in Canal Flats – which serves as a data centre hub, and will serve as a novel data pod manufacturing centre for Iris’ near-term growth pipeline across western Canada that exceeds 750MW.
Think Bitcoin today, data centres tomorrow – because the same infrastructure also represents and capability for cloud/data storage, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, genomics and research, rendering and visualization, smart cities (edge computing/Internet of Things), and even weather forecasting. This is anchor infrastructure for this generation’s version of roads or Internet built by previous generations.
Iris Energy is central to a Canal Flats Next Generation Smart Tech Village Vision with investment opportunities that include industrial ecosystem re-use of excess heat for other industrial processes, technology enterprise, agrifood, greenhousing, and building systems and components.
News Release – https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/australian-bitcoin-firm-iris-energy-103039631.html
Data Centre Background Brief – Village of Canal Flats
Note: there’s “courtesy Iris Energy” pics for this.
