Tao Zhu, Jinse Finance
TL;DR
On April 3, 2026, Bitcoin mining company MARA laid off 15% of its workforce to advance its strategic transformation from a pure Bitcoin mining company to an energy and digital infrastructure company, and to increase its investment in AI infrastructure. The company had previously entered the AI computing power market by acquiring a 64% stake in Exaion. Now, the continued huge losses in its Bitcoin mining business and the explosive growth in demand for AI computing power have become the two core driving forces behind its transformation. Not only MARA, but the AI transformation of mining companies worldwide has already begun…
MARA (NASDAQ:MARA), one of the world's largest Bitcoin mining companies, laid off approximately 15% of its employees, affecting full-time employees and some contract workers across multiple departments. MARA CEO Fred Thiel stated in an internal memo that the layoffs were not purely a financial decision, but rather part of the company's strategic transformation from a pure Bitcoin mining company to an energy and digital infrastructure company.
This move reflects MARA's proactive "slimming down," diverting resources from traditional mining operations and shifting them to the more promising AI field. I. From Mining Company to Digital Infrastructure: MARA's Transformation Path On February 26th of this year, MARA Holdings, Inc. announced a strategic agreement with Starwood Capital Group ("Starwood") and its dedicated data center development platform, Starwood Digital Ventures ("SDV"). This collaboration will help MARA transform and upgrade some of its data centers, building next-generation digital infrastructure to meet the growing needs of enterprise, hyperscale, and AI customers. SDV will lead the design, development, tenant recruitment, construction, and facility operation, while Starwood will provide investment expertise to improve the project's economics. MARA will contribute dedicated, energy-efficient data centers. The two parties will deliver approximately 1 gigawatt of IT capacity, with the potential to eventually reach over 2.5 gigawatts. MARA sits at the intersection of energy and computing, while SDV's development engine provides robust execution and operational capabilities crucial for the transformation and expansion of MARA's intersection into a scalable and sustainable digital infrastructure. The dual-purpose design of these data centers allows them to run AI/enterprise/high-performance computing workloads and Bitcoin mining simultaneously, enabling operational flexibility in an ever-changing market environment. This modular approach allows Marathon to continue its mining operations while securing "highly attractive economic terms" from more profitable data center customers. MARA's AI strategy dates back to 2025. In August 2025, broker HC Wainwright reported that Bitcoin mining company MARA would acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, a high-performance computing (HPC) company under French energy giant EDF, with the potential to increase its stake to 75% by 2027. In February of this year, MARA's official website announced that the acquisition of a 64% stake in Exaion by MARA France had been completed, with EDF remaining a minority shareholder and customer; NJJ acquired a 10% stake in MARA France. Exaion focuses on HPC data centers and security cloud/AI, and its board of directors includes Xavier Niel and MARA CEO Fred Thiel, with plans to accelerate its expansion in Europe. This marks MARA's first substantial entry into the AI/HPC field, transforming from a mining company into a participant in computing power services. II. Why the Transformation? 1. Mining Business Losses Simultaneously with the announcement of the transformation in February, MARA also released its Q4 2025 results: despite some operational improvements, it still incurred substantial losses. In Q4 2025, MARA reported a net loss of $1.7 billion (equivalent to a loss of $4.52 per share), a stark contrast to the $528 million net profit in the same period last year. MARA's fourth-quarter results reflect the severe challenges faced by Bitcoin miners, with multiple headwinds impacting its profitability. The company's financial and operational overview shows that core operating metrics were under pressure overall. Despite a 25% year-over-year increase in hashrate to 66.4 EH/s and a 20% increase in Bitcoin supply to 53,822 BTC, production declined by 19% to 2,011 BTC due to increased network difficulty. MARA successfully improved cost-effectiveness, reducing its daily cost per PET hashrate by 4% to $30.50. However, this was insufficient to offset the impact of Bitcoin price volatility and increased network competition. Adjusted EBITDA plummeted from $796 million in Q4 2024 to negative $1.5 billion, impacted by significant impairments and operational pressures. The company holds approximately $5.3 billion in cash and Bitcoin but faces massive debt of $3.64 billion and has consumed $1.77 billion in leveraged free cash flow over the past 12 months. 2. The Rise of AI MARA's adjustments are also in response to the current trend of the rise of AI. The electricity demand for AI data centers will grow from approximately 50 gigawatts in 2025 to 200 gigawatts in 2030, an increase of 255%, requiring trillions of dollars in capital investment. According to a Goldman Sachs research report, global data center electricity demand will increase by approximately 165%–200% by 2030, with AI-related loads continuing to rise. McKinsey & Company points out that the cumulative investment demand for AI infrastructure (computing power + data centers + electricity) could reach trillions of dollars in the coming years. Under the AI wave, MARA either continues to suffer losses due to the uncertainty of BTC or shifts to the more inelastic computing power market. BTC mining farms are essentially natural AI computing power infrastructure, making MARA's transformation a natural industrial upgrade in line with the trend.
III. Mining Companies Are Collectively Embarking on a Transformation
MARA's transformation is not isolated, but rather a typical microcosm of the entire mining industry.
Over the past year, with the shrinking profit margins of BTC mining and the explosive growth in computing power demand caused by the rise of AI, global mining companies are undergoing a 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, and analysts predict that HPC will make a significant revenue contribution from 2026 onwards. HPC is no longer a sideline: for many mining companies, it is expected to become a major pillar of growth in the coming years. In particular, IREN, Terawaulf, and Core Scientific 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.
This shift is even more pronounced for other companies: IREN's HPC revenue is projected to surge from 3% in 2024 to 71% of total revenue; Core Scientific is expected to reach 71% from 5%; HIVE from 7% to 15%; and Cipher Mining and Terawulf are projected to reach 34% and 70% respectively, while their contributions in 2024 will be negligible. This shift highlights the industry's strategic transformation from reliance on cryptocurrencies to growth driven by artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, with miners positioning themselves as high-performance computing infrastructure providers, offering managed services such as power, cooling, and physical infrastructure. The following are case studies of crypto mining company transformation. 1. Core Scientific, Inc. Core Scientific was founded in Seattle in 2017 but later moved its operational 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 plunge in Bitcoin prices and high debt levels, Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States at the end of 2022. Operations continued during the bankruptcy proceedings. In January 2024, after a major restructuring and reorganization, the company emerged from bankruptcy. Since 2024, the company has increasingly focused on high-performance computing (HPC) for artificial intelligence. In 2025, the company 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 AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining operations will cease. In addition to the Bitcoin sale, the company also secured 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 commodity traders—Michael Intrator, Brian Venturo, and Brannin McBee, along with Peter Salanki. Originally named Atlantic Crypto, it was a cryptocurrency mining company that used graphics processing units (GPUs) to mine Ethereum. Following the cryptocurrency crash of 2018, the company changed its name to CoreWeave in 2019, leveraging its vast GPU inventory to begin providing cloud computing infrastructure to enterprises. With the market's growing demand for artificial intelligence processing in 2022 and 2023, CoreWeave's business, with its exclusive rights to Nvidia GPUs, experienced significant growth. In February 2025, CoreWeave became the first cloud service provider to offer Nvidia GB200 NVL72 chips via cloud computing. IBM announced it would use GB200 clusters to train its Granite AI. In January 2026, CoreWeave received a $2 billion investment from NVIDIA at a price of $87.20 per share, expanding their collaboration to facilitate CoreWeave's data center construction. In February 2026, CoreWeave sought $8.5 billion in new funding, using a large-scale AI infrastructure contract with Meta Platforms as collateral. 3. IREN IREN, formerly known as Iris Energy, was founded in 2018 by brothers Daniel & Will Roberts. The company initially focused on 100% hydroelectric/wind-powered Bitcoin mining, emphasizing "green mining." When it went public in 2021, its hashrate had expanded to 50 EH/s (ranking among the top 5 mining companies globally). During the crypto winter of 2023, it suspended mining expansion and secured access to Texas power grids. It also changed its name to IREN, downplaying its crypto focus. In October 2025, IREN signed a 5-year, $9.7 billion AI cloud service contract with Microsoft. In March 2026, it signed a $3.5 billion contract with Dell to purchase an additional 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell B300 processors. 4. Terawaulf Founded in 2019, Terawaulf focuses on Bitcoin mining and clean energy. In 2024, it established the subsidiary WULF Compute, specializing in AI/HPC hosting and completely transforming mining farms into liquid-cooled AI data centers. 2025 became a milestone year for its order surge. In August, it signed a 450MW, 10-year, $6.7 billion contract with Fluidstack, backed by Google. In December, it reached a 72.5MW, 10-year, $1.1 billion cooperation agreement with G42/Core42 in the UAE. The year saw a total of 522MW of HPC business signed, with a total contract value of $12.8 billion. AI/HPC revenue reached $16.9 million, accounting for 10% of the total revenue that year. It also secured $3.2 billion in equity and debt investment from Google and a total financing package of $6.5 billion. 5. HIVE HIVE, short for HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., was founded in 2017 by Frank Holmes, Aydin Kilic, and others. The core team has experience in cryptocurrency, energy, and technology. From its inception, it established a development direction of "clean energy + cryptocurrency mining." HIVE officially launched its AI computing power transformation strategy in 2024. HIVE has become the third largest AI-transformed mining company in North America (after IREN and Terawaulf), possessing a first-mover advantage in the Canadian sovereign AI cloud market. Its transformation is showing gradual results, forming a stable development pattern driven by both mining and AI.
Summary
As the above cases show, the wave of transformation among cryptocurrency mining companies has already begun. Mining companies are transforming themselves into AI training centers, GPU cloud service platforms, and HPC hosting facilities; some are even shifting from holding cryptocurrencies to selling them for AI investment. This can also be seen as a repricing of computing power assets: in the past, computing power was consumed in mining, thus its dependence on cryptocurrency prices; now, computing power is beginning to serve real industry needs such as AI model training and inference. This shift not only reflects the market's true nature in the context of a sluggish cryptocurrency industry but also represents a structural optimization brought to the market by the arrival of the AI era.
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