IREN signed financing dated 25 August for $2.4bn of graphics processors, servers and ancillary equipment at its Mackenzie site in British Columbia, disclosed in the company's annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission1. The package splits into a $1.2bn master financing and security agreement and $1.2bn of senior notes, priced at a fixed 9.0%, with each tranche maturing 30 months after it is drawn.
One clause carries the weight. The facility funds equipment only on acceptance of the kit, and only through 31 December 2026. A late shipment of servers therefore opens a funding gap as well as a revenue gap, and the 9.0% coupon sets the floor that rental income has to clear before the site earns anything for its owner.
IREN's package is the largest of three borrowings that closed in twenty days, $4.1bn in total between 12 August and 1 September, each secured on the hardware rather than on the company holding it. Nebius Group raised $775m against deployed graphics processors and contracted cash flows earlier in the month. What a lender in these structures can repossess is a depreciating chip, not a building or a tenancy, which is why the covenants reach into the delivery schedule rather than the balance sheet.
The borrowers are specialised compute operators rather than the largest cloud companies, which build at global scale and still fund from cash flow. Read at its real size, this is a financing pattern in one part of the market, not the whole of it.
