MARA Holdings (MARA): Bitcoin Miner Integrates Energy and AI Compute

In recent years, delivering enough computing power has become a key metric for developed economies managing the transition to AI-driven economic activity. The same compute capacity is also in high demand for Bitcoin (BTC ) mining, as digital currencies have become a central pillar of modern finance.

The two activities are interconnected, as the same parallel compute capacity used for Bitcoin mining is also used for AI computation. This is why many Bitcoin mining companies are now expanding into AI-related activities.

However, both computation processes are increasingly constrained not by the availability of chips and data centers, but by how much energy can be supplied to them. In large part, this is because the electric grid is under the same strain from the pressure of electrification of transportation (EVs), heating (furnaces to heat pumps), and industrial processes.

So for investors interested in investing in data centers, AI, digital asset mining, and compute capacity in general, a much closer look at the associated energy supply is required.

This is what makes MARA Holdings quite a unique stock.

The company is one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining operations and the second-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world, and it is also expanding quickly in providing computing capacity for AI inference.

But MARA is also a major energy producer, with the vertical integration of almost one gigawatt of power production, and much more to come online soon. This should ensure that, unlike many of its grid-dependent competitors, MARA can keep expanding capacity as demand hits new records while energy supply lags behind.

MARA’s History: From Rented Capacity To Vertical Integration

MARA’s Holdings was founded in 2010 with an initial focus on acquiring patents and pursuing litigation against technology firms (as the Marathon Patent Group), notably on patents related to encryption technology. It then went public in 2014 on the Nasdaq exchange.

This opened the door for the company to turn toward cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies at the end of the 2010s.

By late 2020, they fully committed to an aggressive “HODL” strategy: retaining all mined Bitcoin on their corporate balance sheet rather than selling it immediately to fund operations. It was a bold move at the time but very profitable in hindsight, as Bitcoin moved from $10,000-$15,000 per Bitcoin in 2020 to the recent $60,000-$120,000 range in 2025-2026.

Source: MacroTrends

In 2021, the company rebranded as Marathon Digital Holdings to reflect its increasing focus on digital asset mining and holding. This included a 37-megawatt bitcoin mining data center powered by a coal-fired plant in Montana.

At the time, the company stirred controversy among the blockchain & crypto community by operating a “fully compliant” mining pool. The company stated that the pool would use software to filter out transactions from sanctioned entities on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list, a move that many perceived as contrary to the decentralized and “rebel” ethos of early crypto ideals.

The mining capacity of the company expanded with the acquisition of two Bitcoin mining facilities from subsidiaries of Generate Capital for $178.6M in 2023.

This gave the company a quickly rising owned capacity from 2024 onward, in opposition to the previous model of just operating data centers owned by other companies.

Source: MARA Holdings

This period was also when the company started to leverage its Bitcoin assets to acquire energy generation assets and more green/low carbon energy capacity, with notably 50 MW of flare gas-to-power generation and 139 MW of wind power.

From 2024, the company also started to move into providing compute capacity for AI inference (the deployment of AI for real use cases, in contrast to training new AI models).

“The area we believe is most interesting is AI at the edge, which is all about inference.…this is a really exciting area as we move into providing digital infrastructure to the AI industry because it’s the exact same infrastructure that’s used by both industries.”

Fred Thiel – Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

This is opening a massive new market for the company, as efficient cost-per-token becomes a growing focus of AI companies.

“The AI industry has already commoditized around this thing called cost of a token and more importantly how much inference do you get per megawatt.…We’ve taken a deliberate approach and waiting for the right partner at the right point in the cycle to begin MARA’s next chapter.”

Fred Thiel – Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

MARA Holdings By The Numbers

MARA has deployed for Bitcoin mining up to 70.3 EH/s (Exahashes per second) in Q2 2026, up 22% year-to-year from 57.4 EH/S.

This means that the company had a total capacity of 70 quintillion hashing calculations every single second, produced by 490,000 active, highly efficient ASIC mining rigs. The calculations are performed quite efficiently, at a rate of 17.6 to 18.6 Joules per Terahash (J/TH), confirming the company’s focus on cost-per-coin leadership.

Source: MARA Holdings

This gives the company control over as much as 8% of the total global Bitcoin network hashrate, despite a small workforce footprint of 266 corporate employees supervising its 19 data centers.

MARA operates at the intersection of three of the fastest-growing industries on Earth: energy, compute, and digital capital.”

Still, current energy prices and the steep depreciation of advanced mining rigs lead to an estimated all-in production cost of $126,500 to $153,040 per Bitcoin. So this makes the Bitcoin mining operation unprofitable at mid-2026 Bitcoin prices, despite a cost of energy of $0.04/kWh.

In comparison,  MARA estimates that AI workloads generate roughly $25 per kWh of power used, encouraging the company to shift toward this market as long as Bitcoin prices are too low.

As a result, cash and Bitcoin holdings have been somewhat reduced in 2026, but still stand at $2.5B in Q2 2026.

Source: MARA Holdings

MARA Holdings’ Strategy

A Core Of Energy Supplies

MARA has been accumulating energy generation assets for many years, but has recently been accelerating the push to generate its own power independently.

A step in that path has been taken with an agreement to acquire Long Ridge Energy for approximately $1.5B, a company with a nameplate capacity of 505 MW from a Combined Cycle Gas Power Plant (“CCGT”). This will represent a 65% increase in MARA’s owned and operated power capacity and would otherwise take around 10 years and up to $2.7B to build.

The company plans to keep building more energy capacity, targeting 400 MW of additional capacity by 2030.

Source: MARA Holdings

Total power generation capacity could grow beyond that, with the planned Matagorda 2 GW site in Texas, which will start construction at the end of 2026 and reach full production in 2028. It will use 1,200 acres of land and add to the $1.2B already invested in Texas.

In the long run, the company could be reaching as high a target as 4.8GW of total power generation capacity, or almost as much power generation as 5 nuclear reactors.

Source: MARA Holdings

So while most of this power is designed to be directly converted into computing power, this makes MARA Holdings a genuinely large electric utility in its own right, with a capacity around 1/10th of a giant like Southern Company (SO ) by the end of the decade.

Bitcoin Optionality

MARA Holdings has historically been a company ready to make a radical shift when its business model requires it, moving from patent acquisition to Bitcoin mining and then to energy generation.

As Bitcoin production costs rose alongside a price decline, the company is being forced to accelerate its shift toward AI inference, although it has prepared for this transition for two years through Scale Modular, a high-density data center designed to switch workloads between Bitcoin and AI Inference.

“At MARA, we’ve anticipated these shifts and are building solutions designed for the future of AI workloads… focus on developing grid responsive platforms that dynamically stabilize inference compute, minimize energy waste, and unlock the next generation of field deployable, sovereign edge AI infrastructure.”

Shifting To AI

The market for AI inference is exploding as AI models become more competent and new use cases are found. This is likely going to be a more durable and stable segment, as even if new AI models somehow stagnate in performance or the cost of training gets too high, usage of the already trained AI models will continue.

It is expected to grow from $106B in 2025 to $254B by 2030, or a CAGR of 19.2%

Source: Markets & Markets

In addition to using its own existing data center with ASICs for Bitcoin mining in AI applications, MARA Holdings bought a 64% controlling stake in Exaion for 168Mm, a sovereign high-performance computing data center company. In addition, MARA can buy an extra 11% stake to reach 75% ownership by 2027 for $127 million.

Source: MARA Holdings

This way, MARA can provide AI inference compute for both types of clients:

• Hyperscale cloud customers needing large capacity at a price as cheap as possible.
• More demanding private, enterprise, and sovereign cloud environments.

Source: MARA Holdings

Alongside a partnership with the private investment firm Starwood Capital Group, this gives MARA an opportunity to capture as much as possible of the AI value stack.

“Starwood’s development engine adds the strong execution and operating capabilities and deep experience required to convert and expand MARA’s existing sites into scalable and sustainable digital infrastructure.”

Source: MARA Holdings

MARA Holdings Investment Case

The case for investing in MARA has evolved over time, as management swiftly moves from one profitable niche to the next when an opportunity arises.

The initial IPs in cryptography patents have evolved into cryptocurrency mining, and then vertically integrated power generation.

A new chapter for MARA is being written with the switch to AI inference for both hyperscalers and secure sovereign AI.

This is not to say that the company will entirely give up on Bitcoin, but it gives it the opportunity to decide where to deploy its energy generation and compute capacity, depending on market conditions.

With existing or already permitted and in-construction additional power generation capacity, MARA Holdings is in a great position to move ahead when its competition is struggling to source enough energy to feed into the data centers they are building.

Wars in the Middle East and escalating Ukrainian-Russian strikes on energy infrastructure could potentially trigger a massive global energy shock. And even if these conflicts calm down, the general trend of electrification is putting a severe strain on existing power generation and grid infrastructure.

So investors wanting exposure to Bitcoin or AI should pay attention to data center operators like MARA Holdings, who can exercise some control over energy costs through vertical integration. And appreciate at its real value a management team that had the foresight of realizing the upcoming bottleneck in the industry was integrated energy supplies, and not chips or data center construction speed.

However, investors should also remember that the AI industry is moving very quickly, and what was the best hardware or infrastructure today might be almost obsolete five years down the road. For example, more efficient models or different types of AI-specific chips could reduce demand for compute or create new, more energy-efficient competitors.

So in that respect, it is maybe not so much MARA Holdings’ existing assets that support the idea of investing in the company, but more the ability of the company’s management to quickly react to and anticipate industry shifts, with a proven track record of successful strategic pivots every 3-5 years in the past two decades.

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