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

Zhu Qian, Golden Finance

Abstract

On April 3, 2026, the Bitcoin mining firm MARA laid off 15% of its workforce to advance its strategic shift from a pure-play Bitcoin mining company to an energy and digital infrastructure company, stepping up its AI infrastructure buildout. Previously, the company entered the AI compute market by acquiring 64% of Exaion’s equity; now, with its Bitcoin mining business continuing to suffer massive losses and AI compute demand surging explosively, the situation has become a dual core driver of its transformation. It’s not just MARA—global miners’ AI transition has long been underway……

MARA, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining firms (NASDAQ:MARA), cut about 15% of its employees, affecting full-time staff 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 Bitcoin mining firm to an energy and digital infrastructure company.

This move reflects that MARA is proactively “shedding weight,” pulling resources out of traditional mining operations and shifting toward the AI space, which offers more growth potential.

I. From miners to digital infrastructure: MARA’s path to transformation

On February 26 this year, MARA Holdings, Inc. had already 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 some of its data centers, building next-generation digital infrastructure to meet the growing needs of enterprises, hyperscale, and artificial intelligence customers.

SDV leads the design, development, tenant recruitment, construction, and facilities operations, while Starwood provides investment expertise to improve the project’s economic returns. MARA contributes dedicated, energy-efficient data centers. Together, 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 compute, and SDV’s development engine provides strong execution and operating capabilities—capabilities that are crucial to MARA’s transition at that intersection into scalable and sustainable digital infrastructure.

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

MARA’s AI buildout can be traced back to 2025.

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

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

II. Why the transition?

1. Mining business losses

At the same time it announced its transition in February, MARA also released its 2025 fourth-quarter results: despite some operational improvement, it still posted massive losses.

In the 2025 fourth quarter, MARA recorded a net loss of $1.7 billion (or a loss of $4.52 per share). This loss stands in sharp contrast to the $528 million net profit in the same period last year. Revenue fell 6% year over year to $202 million, below analysts’ expectation of $253.65 million.

MARA’s fourth-quarter performance reflects the severe challenges faced by Bitcoin miners, with multiple unfavorable factors weighing on its profitability. The company’s financial and operational overview shows that key operating metrics were under broad pressure overall.

Although compute increased 25% year over year to 66.4 EH/s and the Bitcoin supply increased 20% to 53,822 BTC, output dropped 19% to 2,011 BTC due to rising network difficulty. MARA successfully improved cost efficiency, lowering 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 major 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 substantial debt of up to $3.64 billion, and over the past 12 months its leveraged free cash flow burned through $1.77 billion.

2. The rise of AI

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

Electricity demand for AI data centers is expected to grow from about 50 gigawatts in 2025 to 200 gigawatts in 2030, an increase of up to 255%, requiring investments of tens of trillions of dollars.

According to a Goldman Sachs research report: by 2030, global data center power demand will rise by about 165%–200% from current levels, with the share of AI-related workloads continuing to increase; McKinsey & Company noted that the cumulative investment demand for AI infrastructure (compute + data centers + power) could reach a scale of tens of trillions of dollars over the coming years.

In the AI wave, MARA either continues to absorb losses driven by BTC uncertainty, or shifts to the compute demand market that is increasingly “must-have.” A BTC mining facility is essentially a natural AI compute infrastructure; MARA’s transformation looks more like an industry upgrade made in the right direction.

III. Miners are collectively moving onto the path of transformation

MARA’s transition is not isolated; it is a typical snapshot of the entire miners’ circle.

Over the past year, as profitability margins in BTC mining have become smaller and compute demand has exploded due to the rise of AI, miners worldwide have been going through a new wave of transformation.

According to data released by S&P in February: although revenues from high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) have been relatively limited so far, infrastructure investment is accelerating. Analysts predict that starting in 2026, HPC will bring meaningful revenue contribution. HPC is no longer a side business: for several mining companies, it is expected to become a primary pillar of growth in the coming years. In particular, IREN, Terawulf, and Core Scientific are now almost entirely focused on HPC development. 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 shift is even more notable for other companies: 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 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 transition from relying on cryptocurrencies to being driven by artificial intelligence and high-performance computing growth. Miners position themselves as providers of high-performance computing infrastructure, offering hosting services such as power, cooling, and physical infrastructure.

The following introduces transformation case studies of crypto mining companies.

1.Core Scientific, Inc.

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

However, due to a sharp drop in the Bitcoin price 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 reorganization and restructuring, the company emerged from its bankruptcy predicament.

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

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

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

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 cryptocurrency mining company that mined Ethereum using graphics processing units (GPUs). After the cryptocurrency crash in 2018, the company changed its name to CoreWeave in 2019, leveraging its large GPU inventory to begin providing cloud computing infrastructure to enterprises.

As market demand for AI processing continued to grow in 2022 and 2023, CoreWeave, which had exclusive rights to use Nvidia GPUs, experienced significant growth. CoreWeave became the first cloud service provider to offer Nvidia GB200 NVL72 chips via cloud computing in February 2025. IBM announced it will use a GB200 cluster to train its Granite AI.

In January 2026, CoreWeave received a $8B investment from NVIDIA, with an acquisition price of $87.20 per share. The two sides expanded cooperation to promote CoreWeave’s data center buildout. In February 2026, CoreWeave sought new financing of $8.5 billion, pledging a large AI infrastructure contract signed with Meta Platforms.

3.IREN

IREN’s predecessor was Iris Energy, founded in 2018 by the Daniel & Will Roberts brothers. In its early days, the company focused on 100% hydropower/wind power-driven Bitcoin mining, branding it as “green mining.” When it went public in 2021, it expanded compute capacity to 50 EH/s (top 5 globally among miners).

During the 2023 crypto winter, it paused mining expansion and reserved Texas power interconnection rights. It also rebranded as IREN, diluting 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 and added 50k NVIDIA Blackwell B300 units.

4.Terawulf

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

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

2025 became the year of a milestone in which its orders exploded: in August, it signed a contract with Fluidstack, endorsed by Google, for 450MW, 10 years, and $6.7 billion; in December, it also reached a partnership with UAE’s G42/Core42 for 72.5MW, 10 years, and $1.1 billion. For the full year, it signed 522MW of HPC business in total, with total contract value of $12.8 billion. Its AI/HPC revenue was $16.9 million, accounting for 10% of total revenue for the year. Meanwhile, it also received a $3.2 billion equity and debt investment from Google, as well as a total financing package of $6.5 billion.

5.HIVE

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

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

Summary

From the cases above, it’s clear that the crypto miners’ transformation wave has already started. Miners are turning themselves into AI training centers, GPU cloud service platforms, and HPC hosting facilities; and some miners are also selling crypto holdings from before to invest in AI. This can also be seen as a re-pricing of compute assets: in the past, compute was consumed on mining, so compute depended on coin prices; now, compute is starting to serve real industrial needs such as AI model training and inference. This kind of shift is not only the most real market reflection of the broader downturn in the crypto industry, but also a structural optimization brought to the market as the AI era arrives.