NEW YORK, March 23, 2026, 17:44 EDT
MARA Holdings shares jumped Monday as bitcoin rallied, but investors remained divided on the miner’s planned pivot to AI data centers—and just how much bitcoin MARA might need to liquidate to bankroll the transition. By 5:28 p.m. EDT, shares were at $8.91, a gain of $0.44 on the day. Bitcoin hovered around $70,929, up roughly 4.5%. 1
The issue is getting attention as AI firms scramble for dependable power sources, with crypto miners sitting on a chunk of that limited supply. MARA is making a play to turn its mining sites and energy holdings toward landing contracts for artificial-intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) jobs — those massive, energy-intensive workloads running behind cloud and AI platforms — instead of sticking strictly to mining. 2
MARA’s annual report, released March 2, put its bitcoin holdings at 53,822 as of Dec. 31. The company mined 8,799 coins in 2025, and began selling bitcoin in last year’s second half to support operations. In its Feb. 26 letter to shareholders, MARA reported Q4 revenue down 6% to $202.3 million, with net loss stretching to $1.7 billion. Looking ahead, MARA plans to keep selling bitcoin “opportunistically” in 2026, targeting liquidity and capital projects, after wrapping up 2025 with a combined $5.3 billion in cash and bitcoin. 3
Management hasn’t just shifted its treasury strategy—it’s been busy on the deal front too. MARA wrapped up its acquisition of a controlling interest in France’s Exaion, which specializes in secure cloud and AI infrastructure, on Feb. 20. Less than a week later, the company rolled out a partnership with Starwood Digital Ventures, eyeing roughly 1 gigawatt of near-term computing capacity and plotting a route past 2.5 gigawatts at selected locations. The ventures aim to serve enterprise, hyperscale (big cloud) and AI clients, with MARA holding the option to keep as much as 50% ownership in the new projects. 4
Fred Thiel, MARA’s chief executive, pitched the Starwood partnership as a way to swap “power certainty” for “capacity certainty,” arguing it offers a more capital-efficient path into digital infrastructure. Starwood Capital chairman and CEO Barry Sternlicht described data centers as “the infrastructure responsible for driving the modern economy.” 5
The market remains unsettled. Simply Wall St noted on March 22 that shares of MARA dropped 9.2% after investors zeroed in on the company pausing its at-the-market share-sale program—a method for selling stock in increments—along with the partial sale of its bitcoin holdings and an increased focus on AI infrastructure. On Monday, Yahoo Finance reported H.C. Wainwright cut its rating to Neutral from Buy and trimmed the 2026 sales estimate to $851.1 million from $954.8 million, citing execution risk. Another market note highlighted Nasdaq futures and revised brokerage calls as short-term catalysts. 6
MARA wasn’t the only name catching a bid. Riot Platforms, TeraWulf, and Hut 8 all jumped roughly 7% to 12% in late trades on Monday. Last month, Reuters reported that activist investor Starboard pressed Riot to accelerate its push into AI data centers. Over in Louisiana, Hut 8 inked a 15-year AI data center lease back in December. 7
The move isn’t without serious risk. “Securing reliable power sources is one of the biggest constraints” for new AI data centers, Robert Becker, chief investment strategist at Harrison Street, told Reuters last month. MARA’s own filings note that Starwood will be in charge of engineering, construction, and finding tenants—which means everything hinges on actually building out those sites and locking in customers before former mining locations start looking like true enterprise facilities. 2
Bitcoin remains at the center of daily trading activity for now. The token is hovering around $71,000, and MARA holds a market cap of roughly $6.76 billion. Investors are still weighing if the company is turning into a power-and-compute landlord—or just evolving into a pricier, more complex bitcoin miner with a bigger expansion bill.
