Shares of bitcoin miner MARA Holdings jumped 17% on Thursday after the company announced a deal with Starwood Capital Group to convert its existing U.S. mining facilities into large-scale data centers serving enterprise cloud and artificial intelligence customers.
1 GW in near term, up to 2.5 GW later
Starwood, which manages over $125 billion in assets, will lead design, construction and tenant sourcing through its data center arm, Starwood Digital Ventures. The partners expect to deliver roughly 1 gigawatt of computing capacity shortly, with plans to scale beyond 2.5 GW over time. Both firms will co-finance and operate the projects.
MARA built its reputation as a bitcoin miner, but its sites provide direct access to large power supplies — a resource increasingly sought after by tech firms racing to secure energy for AI data centers.
Miner pivot wave: from mining coins to selling compute
MARA is not alone. After Bitcoin's halving cut block rewards in half, combined with rising power costs and volatile bitcoin prices, miner margins have been squeezed. Many have started repurposing infrastructure for AI compute hosting. Bitfarms (BITF) recently rebranded as Keel Infrastructure, shifting from bitcoin mining to data center development for HPC and AI workloads.
Yet MARA CEO Fred Thiel stressed in a shareholder letter: "Bitcoin remains a core pillar of MARA's strategy." He added, "While the timing of a recovery in bitcoin prices is difficult to predict, our long-term conviction in the asset class remains unchanged."
Q4 revenue down 6%, AI pivot yet to pay off
MARA also reported Q4 earnings. Revenue fell 6% to $202.3 million from $214.4 million in the year-ago period, citing a 14% decline in the average price of bitcoin mined during the quarter. The AI data center business has not yet contributed meaningfully to the top line, and the transformation will take time to materialize.