Luka Doncic places full-page ad in LA Times ahead of Lakers' season opener on Wednesday.
"Dear LA, tonight we start our run for a championship."
(via @DanWoikeSports)
A lot of questions this week on funding, so here's how a GPU typically gets funded at $IREN.
First, the customer signs a multi-year take-or-pay contract and agrees to a prepayment. On our recent 3-year contracts, prepayments have been 45% to 55% of the associated GPU capex.
Second, financing is committed, secured by the contracted GPUs. On the Microsoft contract we secured an A-rated facility at around 6%, which together with prepayments covers 96% of GPU capex. More recently, for a non-investment grade counterparty at Mackenzie, we secured financing at 9% fixed, which together with prepayments covers more than the full cost of the GPUs.
That's the GPU side. The data centers are a separate, long-term asset base, and we own the ones our GPUs run in. Construction has been funded from cash to date, with no debt against these multi-billion dollar assets. As they come online with contracted customers, they can support financing in their own right.
The processes behind the next facilities are continuing, and new paper will cost what the market charges. With GPU paybacks of around two years on our recent 3-year contracts, a wider spread barely moves the economics.
There's more customer demand than we can build for. As we noted at our recent earnings, 2026 is largely sold out, recent 3-year contracts are at more than double the prior year's pricing, and demand for anything we can bring online in 2027 covers it several times over, with prepayments a focus in every negotiation. Conversations on 2028 capacity are already underway.
Meanwhile announced capacity keeps slipping across the industry, which is the point: signing deals isn't the bottleneck in this market, bringing GPUs online is, and that's our focus.