India, Aug. 17 -- IREN stock rose in premarket trading on Monday as investors reacted to a major milestone in the company's AI-cloud business. IREN shares were trading at $45.73, up 3.8% from Friday's close of $44.06. The rise came after Microsoft approved Horizon 1, the first site connected to IREN's $9.7 billion cloud agreement with Microsoft. The approval moves an important part of the project from the construction stage to customer acceptance.

Horizon 1 is the first part of IREN's planned 200MW deployment for Microsoft. The site provides 50MW of direct-to-chip liquid cooling capacity, making it the first of four similarly sized installations planned for this year. The milestone is important because IREN is trying to rapidly expand it...