Good day, and welcome to the Iris Energy Investor Update conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Lincoln Tan, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon to those of you in North America, and good morning to those of you in Australia, and welcome to the Iris Energy Investor Update conference call. My name is Lincoln Tan, Director of Investor Relations, and joining me on the call today is Daniel Roberts, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, and Belinda Nucifora, CFO. I would like to remind you that certain statements that we make during this call may constitute forward-looking statements, and Iris Energy cautions listeners that forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations of the company. Listeners should not place undue reliance on forward-looking informational statements. Please refer to the disclaimer on slide two within the accompanying presentation. Thank you, and I will now turn the call over to Dan Roberts.
Thanks, Lincoln. Good morning, good afternoon, depending on where in the world you are today. Nice to be in front of you all again for our quarterly update. So to move through the slide deck, the disclaimer that Lincoln just mentioned, encourage you all to read it in detail. But onto the juicy stuff. So in terms of where we sit today, we have 180 MW online and operating of next generation data centers. As we've advised previously, the additional 80 MW will be coming online early in the new year, and that will be coming online from January. The purpose of those facilities, at least initially, will be for Bitcoin mining. We're targeting an increase from the current 5.6 EH/s of operating capacity to around that 10 EH/s number around the halving.
This has a couple of benefits. One, it gets us to a position of scale and meaningful scale. It also improves our position in the cost curve two ways. One, it allows us to access potentially lower power prices on a blended basis through the expansion at Childress in Texas, where we've so far demonstrated, since the project came online, a very competitive power price. In addition, the additional hardware that we're procuring, for example, the 1.4 EH/s recently announced, is latest generation Bitmain miners, improving our overall fleet efficiency and resilience into that halving. So we already feel like we're in a good position going into the halving next April. $71 million of cash in the bank, operating cash flows and expansion being delivered, and I think this just adds further comfort to us, in the robustness of our business going forward.
We've also got an update to share on the cloud and colocation strategy. As you know, that's something that we've been looking at for quite some time, and we're pleased to give you an update as we go through this presentation. First of all, however, we would like to give you an update on our development activities. As you know, we've previously advised a portfolio of development sites globally in excess of 1 GW. So today we're pleased to share the next site that we have progressed to the next stage of development, being a 1,400 MW site in West Texas. We've secured over 500 acres under exclusive purchase options. We've now signed a connection agreement, paid the initial deposit, and are targeting the late 2026 in-service date.
In terms of our objectives for the site, purely and simply, it's optionality. We're targeting various data center computing applications, and we have a number of years to work through those options. So as a result, we've now got a portfolio of 2,160 MW, either operating, available, or under late-stage development, and we will continue to progress additional development activities globally, as we believe in this broader thematic around the digitization, electrification of the world, and the need and demand longer term for low-cost renewable energy powering compute applications. On that note, I'll pass off to Lincoln, who will take us through an update in more detail on the Bitcoin mining side.
Thanks, Dan. And as Dan mentioned earlier, the key piece of the nearer term strategy is around Bitcoin mining, and core to that growth plan is just continuing to expand our Bitcoin mining business. The expansion at Childress continues to progress very well. We've got a very large team of delivery and construction folk on site. I think we had around 100 people at a toolbox talk at site earlier this week, which is really pleasing to see. And delivering against the construction timelines that I'll talk to is a key priority for our business. The 80 MW expansion at Childress for phase one takes our total Childress operating capacity to 100 MW, and takes our total operating capacity across our four sites to 260 MW.
In terms of more granular detail on timing, we expect to deliver these buildings incrementally from January 2024, approximately one building per month. As you can see from the photo on the right-hand side, our delivery teams are just rolling from one 20 MW building to the next, building out the same data center design, one after the other. At the top of the page, you can see the complete 20 MW data center that's currently operating. That's been operating well since April this year. The second data center building, the exterior is complete, racking and electrical installation is well underway. The third data center building there is also well underway. I think I saw a photo from earlier this morning, which has the shell of the building complete as well. The fourth data center building, structural and internal framing work, it has commenced.
Then finally, that fifth data center building there, foundation form work has also commenced. In terms of our mining hardware and how we fill up these data centers to get to that 10 EH/s, as Dan mentioned, we've currently got 5.6 EH/s that's fully operational. We announced last month the purchase of that 1.4 EH/s of the latest generation Bitmain S21 machines. That takes our self-mining capacity up to 7 EH/s. It's worth noting as well, those machines lead the market in terms of their efficiency. And in terms of that residual data center capacity, the plan is to fill it up with 3 EH/s of miners. That takes us to 10 EH/s. As Dan's gonna cover off very shortly, we're also looking at cloud and colocation as alternative use cases.
At this stage, we haven't procured miners for that 3 EH/s , and we're continuing to assess various procurement opportunities from a risk-reward lens. Stepping through to the next page, the numbers on this slide represent just a worked example of the self-mining unit economics within a 20 MW data center, and hopefully provide some color on how we're thinking about and how we analyze Bitcoin mining returns. The 20 MW example here is relevant because it just aligns to the 20 MW data center design that we're currently rolling out as part of Childress phase one. So firstly, you know, in terms of some key assumptions worth highlighting, from a CapEx perspective, we are assuming approximately $31 million of CapEx per 20 MW. That $31 million is inclusive of both the data center construction costs, as well as the cost for the Bitcoin miners themselves.
In this instance, we are showing the unit economics associated with S21 miners, just for illustrative purposes. In terms of the power cost, we're showing a power cost assumption of $0.021 per kWh at Childress, and that's just based on our experience operating there since April, and that's net of energy trading credits, as well as potential demand response and 4CP benefits. Stepping down to the bottom half of that page, the illustrative mining profit and returns, we've just shown, as we usually do, a range of different scenarios across various Bitcoin prices, and also here on a pre-halving and a post-halving basis. Please note that our post-halving scenario in that bottom row assumes a 20% reduction in the network hash rate.
That's just a figure that's aligned to assumptions that we are seeing from analyst research and just general industry participants and commentators. As you can see from the table, returns are robust across a range of scenarios. Looking right down the middle there in that shaded gray column, that's roughly where spot Bitcoin is. I think spot Bitcoin is actually closer to $37,000, and in fact, transaction fees are probably a bit higher than what we've assumed here. But as you can see, you know, at $35,000 Bitcoin, annualized mining profits, pre-halving, $24 million, and on a post-halving basis, that's $14 million. I'll pause there, and I'm just gonna hand over now to Dan to talk through what we're seeing in cloud and colocation. Over to you, Dan.
Thanks, Lincoln. So moving on to cloud and colocation to provide a quick update in respect of our ongoing pursuit of this business line. To be clear, this is non-Bitcoin mining. These are non-ASICs. Typically, we're talking about GPUs used for things such as generative AI and other use cases. I was just moving house and came across one of our early investor decks from about four years ago and saw a nice chart in that deck, actually, which forecasted an additional 270 GW of data center capacity required by the year 2030.
We're now four years closer to that date, and I think given the developments we've seen in the last six to 12 months around the power demand for generative AI and other power dense compute, it's very clear that we're somewhere on that trajectory, potentially even a bit higher. So our strategy of tying up low-cost renewable energy, utilizing Bitcoin mining and then looking to leverage into adjacent applications in due course, remains as it was four years ago. To step through that in a little bit more detail, just to recap, I guess, the DNA of this business.
So back in 2019, we actually acquired a data center business called PodTech that was set up by two Brians: Brian Fehr, a Canadian industrialist, Order of British Columbia, for his work in regional communities, and importantly, from a data center perspective, Brian Fry, who actually co-founded a company called RackForce in the early 2000s, which grew to be Canada's largest cloud hosting provider. So that was obviously an early partnership when we were designing and iterating our data center design. And then we went on to explain adjacent opportunities where we saw the future of compute. We then signed an MOU with Dell back again about four years ago to explore power-dense computing applications at our first data center site in British Columbia. Leveraged their customer access, their hardware to pursue that.
But at the time, combination of it being early in that space and the opportunity cost of time, capital, resources, and pursuing the Bitcoin mining side of our data center business, that took priority and we put it on hold, as many of you know. In October 2021, we appointed a new CTO, Denis Skrinnikoff, who has a previous relationship with Brian Fry. Dennis has got 25 years of expertise and experience in building Tier 2 to Tier 4 data centers, and has been an integral part of us designing these data centers with those core design principles in mind as to how we leverage the potential of these facilities to service other computing applications outside of ASICs, securing the Bitcoin network.
We've then continued to keep the market informed around us looking at the space, activities and latest status, up until today, with the latest upside update that we're pleased to share. So before I step into a brief update on that, maybe just to recap why we've always felt that we have an opportunity in this space, and time will tell as to how this plays out in reality. But we've always believed that the key to this sector and the next decade of growth in data centers and compute is all about low-cost renewable energy, and not necessarily in capital city locations, where these traditional data centers are obviously set up for very different purposes.
You know, mission-critical applications, servicing government, hospitals, corporate cloud systems where ultra-low latency, high reliability is absolutely key, and the expense of being located in capital cities, the real estate, the labor, the power is just a necessary part of that. Our belief early on has been that the next wave of data centers is all about the power-dense compute, the need for raw computing power. Generative AI is proving to be that, and those facilities, in our minds, they made more sense to be located close to the source of low-cost excess renewables, and built in fit-for-purpose facilities, which we've done. So if you look at the facilities, we've designed our network core. So this is networking, storage, communications around industry best practice and Tier four design principles.
And we've made sure that we've set up the business platform that gives us the ability to look at these adjacent and expansive compute applications. So simple things, having ownership of everything, owning the land, the substations, designing our own power dense data centers to house this compute, has been all part of that plan. So to articulate why we believe we're well positioned to pursue this line of business and explore it further, there's two charts on the right of this slide. One is our PUE. So this is effectively a ratio of how much ancillary power you need to use in relation to the proportion of power that is used for the compute itself. So things like fan, ventilation, airflow, all that ancillary power.
Because we have designed these facilities from the ground floor, literally the soil up, we've been able to design them as highly efficient and ensure that we're not utilizing any extra energy in running this compute than we need to. And then the chart on the right, I think, is a really good one to conceptualize what the opportunity is. So if you look at traditional data centers, and maybe to step back, this is rack power density. So this is every data center has racks, and the rack power density refers to how much energy is being consumed per sq ft, effectively. So within a rack, traditional data centers average around 10 kW, and in fact, I think it's closer to six, and we've referenced the Uptime Institute report from 2023 in that.
The issue is, GPUs require closer to 40 kW per rack, so that's almost 7-8 times higher than your average data center. So the issue that is being encountered in the traditional data center space is the availability of space, the availability of power, the availability of ventilation and airflow to house this load. So one way to visualize this is, you might walk into a room in a data center, and that room currently houses eight conventional racks servicing cloud compute in those more traditional forms that I outlined earlier. All of a sudden, a customer comes along, would like to install some NVIDIA GPUs.
The only way many of these can do it is to remove all the racks out of that data center room and replace the eight with one that is dedicated to the NVIDIA GPUs, creating a lot of empty space, a lot of empty real estate, because that is how you can get power access and how you can manage the ventilation and the airflow. So look, that's one extreme example, but hopefully it helps you visualize what the opportunity is when we then look at the right-hand side of that chart, and our experience in operating racks effectively above 70 kW per rack. So just park the label Bitcoin mining for a second, step back, and just acknowledge that we operate power-dense computing chips. We're operating ASICs, application-specific, application-specific integrated circuits.
Now, it just happens that those circuits are utilized for purposes of securing the Bitcoin network, but equally, they could be utilized for something else. And equally, to then back in GPUs, which use only 40 kW or thereabout, of rack space, you can start to visualize how and why our facilities might be in a good position to start pursuing this business line. So, moving on to a quick status update of where we stand. Look, there are a number of technical and customer work streams underway, so looking at different configurations of our data centers, the data centers as they are, different immersion and liquid cooling systems, open loop, closed loop, and looking across the spectrum of both cloud and colocation.
To clarify what those terms mean, cloud generally refers to an environment where Iris Energy would own the computers, the GPUs, and provide access to those computers and compute via the cloud online. The typical revenue model would be for a customer to pay a number of dollars per GPU hour, and that rate can vary depending on the length of the contract, how guaranteed it is, is it spot? So we expect to have those 248 NVIDIA H100 GPUs arrive in the next few months. So you can expect that we're actively working around the customer outcome for them, and we'll advise closer to the time. In addition, we've started looking at debt financing work streams, ways of securitizing this hardware, and effectively providing a pathway to grow should the demand and the facilities work out that way.
So that's exciting. We've seen other large debt financings announced in this market. Happy to give more detail offline. So that's the cloud solution. In terms of colocation, I guess this is something that really emerged following our purchase of those initial NVIDIA chips. And what it essentially relates to, as I call it GPU, BYO GPUs. So when other people buy the computers, and all of a sudden they need to find some PowerPoints and infrastructure to plug them in. Initially, we were quite skeptical six months ago of the claims that data center capacity is tight and the ability to plug these machines in is going to be challenging, but we are hearing it time and time again, that there is a shortage of data center capacity, and I guess the other piece of evidence. Sorry, it looks like our slide just went back.
Someone's playing around. Sorry. And the other piece of evidence is simply the level of conversations that we're having. So as I mentioned before, we're engaged in customers on various technical aspects of what that would look like, levels of redundancy requirements, how we manage the heat, you know, whether that's air-cooled, whether it's liquid. So that revenue model would be more around $ per kW per month, and is effectively a rental sum, likely to be, and typically more longer term contracts than the cloud solution, where you're just providing the infrastructure under colocation. So we'll keep the market updated and you all updated in due course as we pursue this.
It's fair to say we're really excited by the thematic, but in terms of when and how this plays out, we're just going to continue pursuing it and keep you updated. On that note, I'd like to pass over to Belinda, who's going to run through some of the financial side of the business.
Thank you, Dan, for that very exciting update. So good morning to everyone. I wanted to provide, as Dan said, an update on our liquidity and funding. So we currently have 180 MW of next-generation data centers completed and installed, with ASICs delivering 5.6 EH/s. Both the infrastructure and the hardware CapEx is fully paid and delivering daily operational cash flows. We continue our expansion at our Childress 600 MW site, with 80 MW due to be delivered incrementally from January 2024, with approximately $46 million of CapEx remaining to complete the data center build. In relation to that new capacity coming online, as Lincoln mentioned earlier, we've also ordered 1.4 EH/s of Bitmain S21 miners to be delivered and installed, utilizing 25 MW of the new capacity.
Lincoln also mentioned we're continuing to review the assets procurement plans and funding arrangements for the remaining 55 MW upcoming new capacity. We've also ordered 240 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, expected to be deployed into our existing data center capacity. The remaining CapEx in relation to both of these hardware purchases is approximately $15 million. However, please note this excludes the final 15% purchase price on the Bitmain miners that is due one year after shipping. Dan mentioned in his opening statements, we have a very strong cash position of $71 million at October 31st, 2023. Along with that, we're not carrying any debt on our balance sheet, and we have monthly operation, or should I say daily cash flows as we liquidate our Bitcoin mining daily.
We also have discretion to utilize greater than $300 million of our ELOC and ATM to support growth. The use of this facility will be assessed on an ongoing basis, considering value accretion, market conditions, and dilution. Between the period 1st July 2023 and 31st October 2023, we raised $31.2 million from the sale of nine million shares. So hopefully that's provided everyone an up-to-date position on our funding and liquidity. Moving on to provide an update of our Bitcoin mining operations during the period July to September 2023. During the period, our operating hash rate was 5.6 EH/s, and we mined a total of 1,223 Bitcoin, delivering total mining revenue of $34.5 million, with associated electricity costs of approximately $60.3 million.
That resulted in a net contribution of $18.2 million. As you'd see on our electricity cost line, they do move month-to-month, with July at $6.6 million, August $4.3 million, and September $5.4 million. So the reason for that is that we're actually impacting and lowering our overall energy prices by opportunistically arbitraging between Bitcoin mining production and curtailment at our Childress site. So the graph to the right shows an example of that. So that's a time series over a period from 6:45 P.M. to 9:45 P.M. The red dotted line denoting the energy prices and the green line denoting mining production. So you can see as that red line comes above $200 per MWh, our mining production drops.
So we then curtail during that period from about 7:30 to just before just after 9:00, and we start production again as those energy prices reduce. So as I mentioned, it allows us to reduce our all-in power costs, and this is also via an automated technology solution, so it doesn't have any human intervention to make that decision. So that's an update on our operating results, and I think we're going to now hand over back to Q&A.
Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question will come from the line of Will Carlson from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.
Hey, team, this is Will Carlson on for Josh Siegler. My first question was just have to do with electricity costs at Childress. Clearly, in the past few months, you guys have done a great job of demonstrating stable electricity prices. I was just curious, as that site continues to scale, how does your ability to engage in these energy activities improve and benefit from the incremental scale of the site?
I'm happy to do this one, Lee. Lovely to hear from you, Will. Look, I think it just allows you to have a little bit more leverage and purchasing power in the market, in terms of margins that you pay away to providers and facilitators of market access. But other than that, I think it's expected to largely be linear in terms of the scale up. Yes, we get to amortize a lot of the work we've done in terms of development of our technology and infrastructure stack. But otherwise, our expectation is that size and scale will just continue to mirror what we've done on a unit basis to date.
Thanks. And then one follow-up. Does the team have any update on the, on the WEKA partnership and how that's supporting the ramp-up of your GenAI capabilities?
Yeah, look, it's just a piece of the puzzle that we needed to work through. You know, conventional, traditional computing storage is built very differently to how these generative AI models and large language models embark on their training mechanisms. And the analogy I'd give is if you are storing data traditionally, you know, visualize an external USB where you plug it in, the hard drive, you then transfer data one way, and you wait, and you sit there. The new world of these training models and interfacing with the GPU compute necessitates a lot more efficiency and more dynamic interplay between the storage data and the computing power that's been generated. WEKA have proven themselves to be a bit of a pioneer in this space.
Their focus on sustainability also appealed to us, and I think it's fair to say they've been helpful in terms of accessing the market, you know, cross introductions across customers and different market players. So it's a partnership we're happy with and looking to continue with.
Thanks for taking my question, Dan, and appreciate the answers.
One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Chase White from Compass Point Research. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my questions. So, how should we think about the cadence of CapEx for the remaining Childress Phase One build-out, including the miner payments? And then also, you know, kind of separately for the GPUs, like, how much is remaining in 2023, and how much in 2024?
Hey, Chase. I'll take this one. So in terms of the data center CapEx, we'll address that first. We mentioned $46 billion CapEx to come to finish off that 80 MW. So from a timing perspective, there will just be some working capital timing differences. So, you know, not all of that may necessarily need to be spent before they're, you know, there might there's some of that might push back later into 2024. But, we're delivering them monthly from January 2024. So you'd expect, you know, a lot of CapEx to be spent through the first half of next year just to get that finished off.
In terms of the S21 order, look, we deferred 15% of the purchase price of those chips until one year after the delivery, so, you know, it's probably late 2024 for about $3 million of CapEx for the S21s. It's a series of staged milestone payments with respect to the remainder of the order. So again, the majority of that should be paid pre-delivery in early 2024. In terms of the 3 EH/s, as we mentioned earlier, look, we're looking at options to procure, and we're fully assessing these. We'll keep the market updated as we know more.
Got it. When would you kinda need to order the 3 extra hash? I mean, presumably, you know, there's only, like, 8 months between now and the end of second quarter. So just curious, when you think about how you think about that?
Yeah, look, I mean, in terms of where we see the, the hardware market in general, like, we don't feel particularly rushed at the moment. You know, what we're observing in terms of prices in the, in the new and also secondhand market is, you know, the, the market conditions for hardware are still appear to be challenged. There's a lot of competition, which is good for us, obviously. Delivery timelines do vary depending on, on specific models, but, you know, if you're able to secure the right quality miner from a pricing terms and volume perspective, we're sort of seeing, you know, 6-8 week type delivery timeframes, once they get shipped. So again, we're not feeling super pressed in terms of timing, and those are sort of the, the observations we can see in the market at the moment.
Now, I think the other thing to add to that, Lincoln, is Chase, there's optionality around continuing to wait, both on the hardware side, but also how you procure hardware. I think we saw one of the other listed miners engage with one of the manufacturers on a host own model, which is capital light, but essentially gives them all the upside if they've got a right to buy that hardware. So locking in a margin going into the halving, but effectively retaining all the upside if Bitcoin runs. So that's an interesting model. Buying the chips outright is interesting at the right price and terms, as Lincoln says. The other thing is we also just don't know how this cloud and colocation strategy is going to play out. The reality is, we're having a number of customer conversations.
There might be an opportunity to use some of the capacity for that. Now, time's kind of running out, and I don't necessarily expect that to be the case, but there is a number of factors kind of at play in making those decisions. And I think the final thing is just managing liquidity and not feeling rushed and jammed to make decisions, right? The world's still an uncertain place. There's a lot of uncertainty at a macro level. Just jumping in and piling a lot of cash commitments into these chips right here, right now, when you don't necessarily need to, I just feel like it's a more sensible option to play each week as it comes and wait.
Got it. Makes sense. Thanks.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question off the line, Reggie Smith from JPM, your line is open.
Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I guess with so much capacity remaining at Childress, I was curious, you know, what was the rationale or thinking behind securing another site in Texas? I know you kind of mentioned the theme that we've been hearing today or this evening is kind of around optionality, but just curious, like how you guys are thinking about that, and maybe talk a bit about how many more of these sites are out there. Is it a situation where there aren't but so many of these potential locations left, and it's good to kind of just place, you know, placeholders in different areas or what? Just a little color on that would be helpful.
Yeah, thanks, Reggie. Look, I think it comes back to a deep-seated belief that we held when we started this business around the future of humanity, and sorry to sound all grand about it, but this like buzzwords, like the fourth industrial revolution, it's real. Like we're absolutely seeing it play out live time, and we believe it. And the key to that is having the land and access to low-cost renewable energy. You know, for our business, you know, at the end of the day, this is a business that Will and I set up. We believe in the thematic. We believe in Bitcoin.
We believe in that power-dense compute and the exponential trend that's likely to come, and I think in that context, you know, paying $4.7 million to secure and keep 1,400 MW, you know, that's just a very large number, on track for delivery in a few years is just incredibly valuable optionality for our business and the shareholders. You know, we saw. I think it was NVIDIA and Reliance actually do a similar-sized JV in India over the last couple of months. Like the numbers we forecast are going to get bigger, and I think based on the conversations we're having in the market, where we see the market going, it's a really sensible step to future-proof our business from that growth perspective and give us all optionality.
It doesn't necessarily mean, like we're not going to do Bitcoin mining there for 1,400 MW. Like that shouldn't be the assumption. At the end of the day, we've got the business and platform where in theory we can do anything. Let's assume it's data centers, but maybe it's hydrogen. We just don't know. There's no reason in principle why we couldn't do tier four data centers at that site, if that was what the market wanted, and needed over the next few years. In terms of how many other sites of that size are out there, we haven't seen them. It's an incredibly large site.
I don't think I've ever seen anything this big. Are there other multi-hundred-MW sites available out there? Yep. Do we have them? Yep. Do we have them in other jurisdictions? Yep. But right here, right now, given the activity in North America, given the market dynamics of Texas, given the relatively low cost of catalyzing that option and kicking it off, the decision was made, to do that.
All right. That makes sense. Can you, I guess you guys talked about late 2026 as kind of when that area could be, I guess, energized or put to use. Like what are, if you can share, like what are some of the conditions? Because there's an option, obviously. Like, what are some of the conditions that, you know, kind of need to fall in line for that to occur? It sounds like maybe more of the high-density compute stuff needs to kind of materialize for that to make sense. And I ask that because I'm curious whether there are any benefits to just running or launching two different sites for Bitcoin mining concurrently, you know, given the remaining capacity you have at Childress.
So if you could just talk about like what conditions or things you're looking for that would say, boom, this is, you know, we're going forward and turn that option into an actual development, if you will.
Yeah, for sure. Look, Reggie, we're at risk of overplaying this, to be honest, because we've got a number of other sites that are not in a dissimilar position where we could pay the money and get them kind of cranking on the next stage of development. At the end of the day, we should look at it as both optionality but also value accretion for shareholders. You know, we've been offered cash for power and land at Childress. You know, substantial amounts of cash. We're talking eight figures for a few hundred MW. So there is intrinsic value in these sites beyond us developing it directly, the opportunity to partner, the opportunity to use creative financing structures, like they're all kind of ahead of us.
That's not exactly answering your question, but I think to answer your question directly, it's a function of the market. Is the market demand there? You know, if Bitcoin runs to gold parity and is $600,000 a coin in five years, and I'm yet to hear a plausible argument as to why the market capitalization of Bitcoin one day can't be equal to the market capitalization of gold. You know, does it get halfway? Does it get a quarter of the way? What does that mean for Bitcoin mining economics? Gee whiz, having 1,400 MW of additional power could be the greatest investment this business has ever made. And similarly, on the AI side, we are seeing very large numbers being published. I mentioned that NVIDIA Reliance number. I think we saw Microsoft announce expected CapEx per year.
of $50 billion per year on data centers going forward. So look, I think it just gives us runway in this business to continue running hard at all power dense compute, whether that's Bitcoin, generative AI, genomics, rendering, you know, a whole host of these power dense compute that have emerged and are likely to emerge over the next few years.
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm glad you, glad you pointed that out. If I could sneak one last quick one in. You got a slide in the presentation that shows, I guess, an example of curtailment, and I was hoping you guys could kinda share, you know, basic order of magnitude, like, how much, how much time are you actually curtailing to generate the types of, savings, that you guys are? If that makes sense. You know, are we talking, like, maybe 5% at a time in the summer? Is, is what you have to curtail to, to generate that type of, savings? I'm just, I guess, trying to appreciate the volatility in the underlying price and how long that lasts, if that makes sense to you.
Yeah, no, it does make sense. Unfortunately, the answer is not simple because it's dynamic. It depends on which day and which month. The way to think about this, Reggie, is essentially we've got two prospective customers of all the power that we procure, and we've got a call option as a business on two markets. Firstly, we can run each contracted electron through our computers to secure the Bitcoin network, and that will generate a revenue line. Let's say, for example, it's $100/MWh, is our revenue line for every electron of power we flow through the computers. But equally, we have another buyer every 15 minutes, which is the market price and the wholesale price of power in Texas.
We can set our algorithm with a parameter such that every time the market price of power is higher than that $100/MWh, we divert the electron into that market instead. There's a decision point, kind of, every minute, of every day, of what we do with the next electron that is coming into our facility. Does the Bitcoin network demand it, or does the wholesale market demand it and value it higher? And ultimately, we're economically driven. Yes, there's perfectly good social benefits to this in terms of energy market support, behaving as a demand-side battery by solving supply-demand issues, particularly revolving around intermittent renewables.
But we also should acknowledge that it is generating value for shareholders and economically driven, where we have the option to divert each electron to a higher and better use, depending on which market demands and values that electron higher.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Golding from Macquarie Capital. Your line is open.
Thanks so much. I was wondering if you could give some color on, size of, maybe capacity in terms of the deals that you're talking to, customers about right now in the HPC space. In other words, I'm trying to understand, how responsive you can be to build out the rest of Childress to meet some demand, and whether the tranches of demand that might come on from an HPC perspective would require incremental long lead time items and, those types of things. Thank you.
Thanks, Paul. Look, the challenge with all this stuff, and it's not just isolated to crypto, everyone loves talking a big game and throwing big numbers out there. So we hear all sorts of numbers, everything from 1 MW to really large numbers of MW, and you chat to customers and prospective partners of varying levels of, I guess, confidence from our perspective around their forecast for where the market and their business is going. So look, I can throw big numbers out there based on conversations we've had, but how real are they? Like, it's just not our position to guess or theorize.
At the end of the day, we'll just engage on a case-by-case basis with potential partners and customers that we think are aligned to the way we see the world, and look to sign contracts that are sensible, that align with that. Is that a contract for 1 MW initially? Is it a contract for 5 MW? Is it 20 MW? Is it 0 MW? At the end of the day, there's no guarantees. We're, we're dealing in a, a new sector, new set of customers and opportunities. We've just got to work through it all on a case-by-case basis and see where it takes us. I guess one level of confidence you can infer is around, you know, decisions to keep additional developments ticking along, such as this new 1,400 MW site.
Like over the next three years, is it plausible that we build out the rest of Childress and that extra 500 MW that sit in there? Well, absolutely, it's plausible. And we'd love to, but there are things outside of our control. There's things inside our control. But I guess we're only seeing continued validation of the demand for energy and renewable energy-driven compute, and we think it's an interesting position to keep position the business with the optionality to keep growing, at that pace.
Thanks, Dan. Just to follow up around air versus liquid, I think you made a comment in your prepared remarks or maybe in response to one of the questions regarding potential liquid for GPUs. Is that something that you're exploring? Is that something that will require incremental CapEx and design in terms of future facilities? Is it application specific to GPUs? How should we think about that comment and whether you might integrate that into future designs?
The short answer is yes to all those questions, Paul, but that's not overly helpful. Look, ultimately, I think when it comes to Bitcoin mining, we're very comfortable, extremely comfortable with our air-cooled design, and I think we've earned that acknowledgment from the market as well, just with our consistent uptime and operating results that we've demonstrated over the last couple of years. In terms of GPUs, there's obviously more unknowns around that and how that will play out. Our bias is still well and truly towards air cool, and we believe that that's probably the way to go. But equally, we're now dealing with customers and third parties and other stakeholders, and they have views of the world, and they may be more biased to liquid cool cooling. They might prefer open loop, they might prefer closed loop.
They might have experience in operating certain types of thermal systems in other data centers, and they just don't want to take the risk, and they just don't want to deviate. At the end of the day, they've got a business to run. They've got a technical setup that they're comfortable with that is powering their business. Who are we to get in the way of that? Like, at the end of the day, we've got power, land, a team of 100, with decades of data center, infrastructure, energy experience. At the end of the day, if that's what the market wants, and we can generate value for shareholders, then yeah, why not? Let's do it.
Great. Thanks for that.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Lucas Pipes from B. Riley. Your line is open.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, everyone. My first question is on the AI chip side. Do you look to form a partnership with one of the major suppliers, be it NVIDIA, AMD, keep your options open at this time, and if you're not ready for more partner,
Um, Lucas?
Perhaps, operator, we roll to the next question, and if Lucas joins the queue, we can grab his question again.
We currently have no further questions in the queue. As a reminder, that's star one one for questions. Star one one.
Maybe to answer part of what I think Lucas was asking, partnerships with suppliers of GPUs, et cetera, absolutely. We're talking to the system integrators, the OEMs, the manufacturers, working through options, how we can benefit their business model, how we can grow in a way that makes sense for everyone. How we can finance the growth of a cloud solution. You know, spending $10 million for 248 GPUs and funding that out of equity and perpetuity is gonna be challenging for us. So equally working with them and other parties around how we finance that growth, how we manage the end customer contracts, what they might look like.
Yeah, they're conversations that are all ongoing. But at the end of the day, we've just got to work through it all, and it'll be what it'll be. Focus on the process. Yes, we've got a bit of a mantra internally that there are ones and zeros in life, and everything less than a one gets rounded to zero, i.e., doesn't count. But ultimately, you've just got to be disciplined around the process and know that the outcome should eventuate.
Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Dan Roberts for any closing remarks.
Excellent. Thank you. Well, thanks everyone for dialing in. Obviously, it's a pretty exciting time for our business. We feel like we're well positioned from a Bitcoin perspective, well positioned going into the halving. Yes, there's uncertainty around the macro, but with the ETF conversation for Bitcoin, the upcoming supply shock from the halving, it does look like a really interesting time in the Bitcoin market. I did read somewhere that 88% of all Bitcoin haven't moved in the last three months. And, you know, we've been involved in this sector for 10 years, and this pops up every cycle.
Every cycle, the demand or the holding profile of these coins, long-term believers bottom draw them, and you get the supply shock, whether it's a macro-driven event or a halving-driven event, where the number of coins halve with the click of a finger. That demand, that incremental demand, we've seen kick off these vertical parabolic cycles in Bitcoin, and our view is that it'll probably happen again. We can't plan on it, but we can be positioned for it. And then the ability to leverage our platform into alternate and additional compute is exciting. Machine learning, genomics and research, rendering, you know, generative AI is the flavor of the month today, but continuing to pursue that line of business, I think gives us great optionality as a company. And yeah, just wanted to give a shout-out to the 100 employees at Iris.
They work tirelessly. It's an amazing culture, the energy, the enthusiasm. We wouldn't be where we are without their work. Even simple things like this presentation, you know, there's probably 60 different versions and a lot of late nights that go into producing the finished output, which hopefully has resonated with you all. But it's really important that we acknowledge there's a lot of hard work behind the scenes, and it's a great place to be a part of. So thanks for all your support. Thanks for dialing in. Look forward to the next update.
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.