An artificial intelligence startup is getting their computing power from a publicly traded Bitcoin miner.
What’s happening:
- Bitcoin mining company Iris Energy (NASDAQ: IREN) has announced a deal with Poolside AI to use Iris’s renewable energy powered data centres for GPU compute to train Poolside’s artificial intelligence models
By the numbers:
- Poolside raised $126M USD in venture capital to fund advance their mission of leveraging artificial intelligence for software development
- The deal between Iris Energy and Poolside will give Poolside access to 248 Nvidia H100 GPUs hosted at Iris Energy’s data centres
- The initial deal is expected to last 3 months prior to an option to renew
Why it matters:
- Bitcoin mining companies venturing into artificial intelligence computing power has been an ongoing trend, with many publicly listed Bitcoin miners beginning to expand their data centres into being capable of handling generative AI workloads
Going deeper:
- Iris Energy also has been doubling down on expanding their existing Bitcoin mining operations, including a recent sizeable purchase of new mining rigs from Bitmain
