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Bitcoin miner Mara Holdings has entered into a strategic partnership with Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group to transform existing mining sites into data center infrastructure for artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
MARA shares jumped about 17% in after-hours trading advertising February 26.
The joint project aims for a capacity of 2.5 gigawatts
The two companies will jointly develop, finance and manage data center projects across MARA’s existing portfolio. Starwood Digital Ventures, the company’s data center platform, will design, build, bring tenants and operations. MARA contributes sites that provide access to low-cost energy.
The combined platform targets around 1 GW of IT capacity in the short term, with a trajectory of more than 2.5 GW. These facilities will be designed to switch workloads between Bitcoin mining and smart computing depending on market conditions and customer demand. MARA will have the option to retain up to 50% ownership in the joint venture, with the two companies sharing development costs and profits. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“Our partnership with Starwood will allow us to turn energy certainty into capacity certainty,” said MARA CEO Fred Thiel, adding that the joint venture offers a more capital-efficient approach to infrastructure construction.
Starwood Capital manages more than $125 billion in assets. Starwood Digital Ventures manages a team of 94 people with more than 10 gigawatts of data center experience.
Miners are moving towards AI infrastructure
The announcement coincides with MARA’s fourth-quarter earnings, which revealed a net loss of $1.7 billion driven primarily by unrealized write-downs on its bitcoins. Quarterly revenue was $202 million, down 6% from the same period last year. The company only tracks Michael Saylor’s Strategy in institutional Bitcoin holdings.
MARA step goes with a model In the mining sector. Companies previously focused solely on Bitcoin production are repurposing their energy assets and physical infrastructure for AI workloads, driven by shorter delivery times compared to building new facilities from scratch.
Many top miners, including IREN, TeraWulf, and Cipher Mining, have seen their market cap surpass MARA despite producing less Bitcoin mining power. Meanwhile, Starboard Value has taken a significant stake in Riot Platforms, putting pressure on the Texas-based mining company to accelerate its data center transformation efforts.
JLL and Paul Weiss served as strategic and legal advisors to MARA.
