Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings announced a partnership with Starwood Property Trust to develop AI-driven data centers.
According to a Feb. 26 announcement, the two companies entered into a strategic agreement to “jointly develop, finance and operate digital infrastructure projects across MARA’s existing, energy-rich portfolio.”
As part of the deal, MARA will work with Starwood Digital Ventures, the data center development arm of Starwood Capital Group, to convert and expand select U.S. Bitcoin mining sites into hyperscale data center campuses capable of serving enterprise, cloud and AI workloads.
“MARA’s energy-rich sites provide customers with what they need most: predictable access to energy at scale. Our partnership with Starwood will allow us to turn that energy certainty into capacity certainty, so customers can run diverse workloads close to their data and users,” MARA President and CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement.
The partnership will focus on sites with access to low-cost energy and strong network interconnection positions, which would then support both Bitcoin mining operations and AI-based high-performance computing workloads.
The companies plan to deliver about 1 gigawatt of computing capacity in the near term, and expect to expand that to more than 2.5 gigawatts over time.
MARA shares jumped more than 15% in after-market trading following the Starwood partnership announcement. Shareholders viewed the joint venture as a strategic diversification move, especially after the company’s disappointing earnings report revealed a quarterly net loss of $1.7 billion and falling revenue.
As previously reported by crypto.news, crypto mining stocks, including MARA, have struggled over the past few months due to a market-wide slowdown and tight profit margins.
At the same time, a powerful winter storm in January pushed Bitcoin’s hashrate to its lowest level in seven months, as several U.S. miners had to power off or slow operations to ease pressure on strained power grids.