Iren's second act
The off-balance sheet financing that sank the company’s crypto operation is now propping up its AI pivot
In 2021, investing in Bitcoin miner Iren seemed like a good punt for racing industry figure, Rob Spano, also a finance veteran who sits on a subsidiary board of Metrics Credit Partners.
It was also appealing to prominent racehorse owner Marc De Stoop, his brother Joel and their business partner Nahi Beani. The three men work together at Climatech, a company Marc De Stoop founded and which engineers complex air conditioning systems for big buildings.
Yet the experience of Iren investors like Spano, the De Stoops and Beani demonstrate the perils of off-balance sheet finance – a lesson even more relevant today as hyperscalers and neocloud operators resort to ever more complex financial engineering to fund the chips needed for the coming profusion of data centres.
Iren, founded by literal tech bros and former Macquarie execs Daniel and Will Roberts, listed on the Nasdaq in November 2021, with a valuation of US$1.5 billion and promises to mine the cryptocurrency in a kinder, gentler, and more environmentally sustainable way.
The book was run by a cavalcade of respectable names including JP Morgan, Canaccord Genuity, Citigroup and the brothers' old shop, Macquarie Capital, and these were heady days when some in financial markets still believed Bitcoin had a future outside of buying drugs or passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
