Layoffs, selling coins, developing AI: MARA's transformation is just a typical example of what mining companies are doing.

Zhuji, Golden Finance

Abstract

On April 3, 2026, Bitcoin miner MARA cut 15% of its workforce to push the company’s strategic transition from a pure-play Bitcoin mining firm to an energy and digital infrastructure company, stepping up its AI infrastructure buildout. Previously, the company had entered the AI compute market by acquiring 64% of Exaion’s equity. Now, with its Bitcoin mining business continuing to incur massive losses and AI compute demand surging explosively, these have become the two core drivers behind its transformation. This is not only about MARA—the AI transformation paths of Bitcoin miners worldwide have long been underway……

MARA, one of the largest Bitcoin mining firms in the world (NASDAQ:MARA), cut roughly 15% of its employees, affecting full-time employees across multiple departments and some contract workers. In an internal memo, MARA CEO Fred Thiel said the layoffs were not purely a financial decision, but part of the company’s strategic transition from a pure-play Bitcoin miner to an energy and digital infrastructure company.

This move reflects that MARA is actively “shrinking,” reallocating resources away from traditional mining operations toward the AI space.

I. From a mining firm to a digital infrastructure provider: MARA’s transformation path

On February 26 this year, MARA Holdings, Inc. had previously announced that it had reached a strategic agreement with Starwood Capital Group (“Starwood”) and its dedicated data center development platform, Starwood Digital Ventures (“SDV”). This collaboration will help MARA upgrade and transform some of its data centers, building next-generation digital infrastructure to meet the growing needs of enterprises, hyperscale customers, and artificial intelligence customers.

SDV leads design, development, tenant recruitment, construction, and facilities operations, while Starwood provides investment expertise to improve project economics. MARA will contribute dedicated, energy-efficient data centers. The two sides will deliver about 1 gigawatt of IT capacity, and are expected to ultimately reach more than 2.5 gigawatts.

MARA sits at the intersection of energy and computing, and SDV’s development engine provides strong execution and operational capabilities—capabilities that are crucial for MARA to convert and expand at this intersection into scalable and sustainable digital infrastructure.

The dual-purpose design of these data centers enables them to simultaneously run AI/enterprise/high-performance computing workloads and Bitcoin mining, achieving operational flexibility amid a constantly changing market environment. This modular approach allows Marathon to continue its mining business while also securing “highly attractive economic terms” from data center customers with higher profit potential.

MARA’s AI buildup traces back to 2025.

In August 2025, broker HC Wainwright pointed out that Bitcoin miner MARA would acquire 64% of Exaion, a high-performance computing (HPC) company owned by French energy giant EDF, and that it could increase its stake to 75% before 2027. In this February, an announcement on MARA’s official website showed that the transaction for MARA France to acquire 64% of Exaion had been completed; EDF remains a minority shareholder and customer; NJJ invested in MARA France with 10%. Exaion does HPC data centers and secure cloud/AI, and its board includes Xavier Niel and MARA CEO Fred Thiel, with plans to accelerate expansion in Europe.

This marks MARA’s first substantive entry into the AI/HPC space—transforming from a mining firm into a participant in providing compute services.

II. Why transform?

1. Mining business losses

At the same time it announced the transformation plan in February, MARA also released its 2025 fourth-quarter results: although operations improved, it still posted massive losses.

In 2025’s fourth quarter, MARA recorded a net loss of $1.7 billion (equivalent to a loss of $4.52 per share), sharply contrasting with the net profit of $528 million in the same period last year. Revenue fell 6% year over year to $202 million, below analysts’ expectations of $253.65 million.

MARA’s fourth-quarter performance reflects the harsh challenges faced by Bitcoin miners, with multiple adverse factors weighing on its profitability. The company’s financial and operating overview shows that its core operating indicators are under overall pressure.

Although compute grew 25% year over year to 66.4 EH/s and Bitcoin supply grew 20% to 53,822 BTC, output fell 19% to 2,011 BTC due to an increase in network difficulty. MARA successfully improved cost efficiency, reducing the daily cost per PET of compute by 4% to $30.50. However, this was not enough to offset the impact of Bitcoin price volatility and intensifying network competition.

Driven by significant impairment charges and operational pressure, adjusted EBITDA plunged from $796 million in the 2024 fourth quarter to negative $1.5 billion. The company holds about $5.3 billion in cash and Bitcoin, but faces a massive debt of as much as $3.64 billion, and over the past 12 months, leveraged free cash flow consumption reached $1.77 billion.

2. AI surges

MARA’s adjustments are also designed to align with the current major trend of AI’s rise.

Power demand for AI data centers will grow from about 50 gigawatts in 2025 to 200 gigawatts in 2030, an increase as high as 255%, requiring investment of tens of trillions of dollars.

According to a Goldman Sachs research report: by 2030, global data center power demand will increase by roughly 165%–200% compared with today, and the share of AI-related workloads will continue to rise. McKinsey & Company said that in the coming years, the cumulative investment demand for AI infrastructure (compute + data centers + power) may reach a scale of tens of trillions of dollars.

In the AI wave, MARA either continues to absorb losses caused by BTC uncertainty or shifts to the compute-demand market, which is becoming more “must-have” and essential. A BTC mining farm is essentially a natural AI compute infrastructure, so MARA’s transformation looks more like an industry upgrade riding the momentum.

III. Miners are collectively heading down the transformation road

MARA’s transformation is not isolated; it is a typical snapshot of the entire mining sector.

Over the past year, as profitability from BTC mining has shrunk further and compute demand has exploded due to the rise of AI, mining firms worldwide are all going through a new wave of transformation.

According to data released by S&P in February: although revenue from high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) has been relatively limited so far, infrastructure investment is accelerating. Analysts predict that starting in 2026, HPC will bring significant revenue contribution. HPC is no longer a side business: for multiple mining companies, it is expected to become a main growth pillar in the next few years. In particular, IREN, Terawulf, and Core Scientific—these are now almost entirely focused on HPC development, and analysts predict that these businesses will drive most of these companies’ revenue growth in 2026.

By 2026, high-performance computing (HPC) revenue will account for 13% of Riot’s total revenue. The change by other companies is even more striking: IREN’s HPC revenue is expected to jump from 3% in 2024 to 71% of total revenue; Core Scientific is expected to rise from 5% to 71%; HIVE will move from 7% to 15%; Cipher Mining and Terawulf are expected to reach 34% and 70%, respectively, while their contributions in 2024 were nearly negligible.

This shift highlights the industry’s strategic transformation from relying on cryptocurrencies to growth driven by artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Miners are positioning themselves as providers of high-performance computing infrastructure, offering hosted services such as power, cooling, and physical infrastructure.

The following introduces transformation cases of crypto mining firms.

1.Core Scientific, Inc.

Core Scientific was founded in Seattle in 2017, but later moved its operations headquarters to Austin. Its founders include former Microsoft COO B. Kevin Turner. The company initially focused on Bitcoin mining using renewable energy and digital asset infrastructure.

However, due to the sharp drop in Bitcoin prices and high levels of debt, Core Scientific filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code at the end of 2022. During the bankruptcy proceedings, the company’s operations continued. In January 2024, after large-scale restructuring and shuffling, the company emerged from its bankruptcy difficulties.

Since 2024, the company has placed increasing emphasis on artificial intelligence high-performance computing (HPC). In 2025, it signed a $10 billion data center operations contract. In July 2025, CoreWeave announced plans to acquire Core Scientific for $9 billion.

In March 2026, Core Scientific announced the sale of approximately $175 million worth of Bitcoin to accelerate the expansion of its artificial intelligence infrastructure. On the other hand, its Bitcoin mining business will be halted. In addition to selling Bitcoin, the company also obtained a $1 billion loan to build new data centers in multiple U.S. states.

As of March 2026, Core Scientific currently operates 10 data centers across seven U.S. states.

2.CoreWeave, Inc.

CoreWeave was founded in 2017 in New Jersey by three commodities traders—Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, and Brannin McBee—and Peter Salanki. The company was originally named Atlantic Crypto, a crypto mining company that mined Ethereum using graphics processing units (GPU). After the crypto crash in 2018, the company changed its name in 2019 to CoreWeave and began using its large inventory of GPUs to provide cloud computing infrastructure for enterprises.

As demand for AI processing in the market continued to grow in 2022 and 2023, CoreWeave—whose business has exclusive usage rights to NVIDIA GPUs—achieved significant growth. CoreWeave became the first cloud service provider to provide NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 chips via cloud computing in February 2025. IBM announced it would use a GB200 cluster to train its Granite AI.

In January 2026, CoreWeave received a $200 million investment from NVIDIA, with an acquisition price of $87.20 per share, and both sides expanded cooperation to promote CoreWeave’s data center construction. In February 2026, CoreWeave sought new funding of $8.5 billion and used a major artificial intelligence infrastructure contract signed with Meta Platforms as collateral.

3. IREN

IREN’s predecessor was Iris Energy. Founded in 2018 by the Daniel & Will Roberts brothers, the company in its early days focused on 100% hydropower/wind power-driven Bitcoin mining firms, positioning itself around “green mining.” When it listed in 2021, it expanded its compute capacity to 50 EH/s (the top 5 mining firms globally).

During the 2023 crypto winter, it paused mining expansion and reserved Texas power grid access rights. It then changed its name to IREN, downplaying the crypto label.

In October 2025, IREN signed a five-year, $9.7 billion AI cloud services contract with Microsoft. In March 2026, it signed a $3.5 billion contract with Dell, adding 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell B300 units.

4. Terawulf

Terawulf was founded in 2019, focusing on Bitcoin mining and clean energy.

In 2024, it established its WULF Compute subsidiary, dedicated exclusively to AI/HPC hosting, and fully retrofitted its mining sites into liquid-cooled AI data centers.

2025 became a milestone year for order surges. In August, it signed a 450MW, 10-year, $6.7 billion contract with Fluidstack, backed by Google. In December, it also reached a cooperation with the UAE’s G42/Core42 for 72.5MW, 10 years, $1.1 billion. For the full year, it accumulated signed contracts of 522MW of HPC business, with total contract value of $12.8 billion. Its AI/HPC revenue reached $16.9 million, accounting for 10% of total revenue for the year. It also obtained a $3.2 billion equity plus debt investment package from Google and a total funding package of $6.5 billion.

5. HIVE

HIVE’s full name is HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., founded in 2017 by Frank Holmes, Aydin Kilic, and others. The core team combines experience across cryptocurrencies, energy, and technology; from the very beginning, it set the development direction of “clean energy + crypto mining.”

In 2024, HIVE officially launched its AI compute transformation strategy. HIVE has become the third-largest AI transformation mining firm in North America (only behind IREN and Terawulf). In Canada’s sovereign AI cloud market, it has a first-mover advantage; the results of its transformation are gradually becoming visible, forming a stable development pattern driven by a “mining + AI” dual-engine.

Summary

From the cases above, it can be seen that the transformation wave of crypto mining firms has already begun. Mining firms are turning themselves into AI training centers, GPU cloud service platforms, and HPC hosting facilities; and some mining firms are shifting from previously holding cryptocurrencies to selling coins in order to invest in AI. This can also be seen as a re-pricing of compute assets: in the past, compute was consumed by mining, so compute depended on coin prices; now, compute is starting to serve real industrial demand such as AI model training and inference. This change is not only the most genuine reflection of the market amid the broader environment of an underperforming crypto industry, but also a structural optimization brought to the market by the arrival of the AI era.