NEW YORK, Feb. 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) ("IREN") today announced the appointment of John Gross as Chief Innovation Officer, a newly established role responsible for leading engineering standards, thermal architecture, and commissioning across IREN's next-generation data centers.

Mr. Gross is a globally recognized leader in data center engineering, with two decades of industry experience and deep expertise in high-density and liquid-cooled data center design. He serves as Vice Chair of committees within ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), which develops global standards for high-density and liquid-cooled data centers. As AI workloads increase in density and thermal intensity, leadership in liquid-cooled environments is becoming a more critical competitive differentiator.

Mr. Gross has supported the design and technical due diligence of IREN's data center portfolio over several years, contributing to the engineering standards now deployed across the platform. By formalizing this role internally, IREN continues to bring critical engineering expertise in-house as it scales multi-gigawatt infrastructure.

Daniel Roberts, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of IREN, commented: "John has been instrumental in shaping our engineering standards over several years. As AI workloads increase in density and complexity, his leadership will be central to maintaining technical rigor as we scale efficiently across our platform."

Mr. Gross added: "IREN has built a disciplined platform at the intersection of power, infrastructure, and compute. As AI workloads become more demanding, engineering discipline and cooling architecture will be critical to performance and efficiency. I look forward to helping deliver the next generation of IREN's data centers."

About IREN

IREN is a leading AI Cloud Service Provider, delivering large-scale GPU clusters for AI training and inference. IREN's vertically integrated platform is underpinned by its expansive portfolio of grid-connected land and data centers in renewable-rich regions across the U.S. and Canada.

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Forward-Looking Statements

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IREN Appoints John Gross as Chief Innovation Officer