MARA partners with Starwood to build AI data centers, shares rally 17%

Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings has announced a partnership with Starwood Property Trust to develop AI-focused data centers.

According to a Feb. 26 announcement, the two companies have entered into a strategic agreement to “jointly develop, finance, and operate digital infrastructure projects across MARA’s existing, power-rich portfolio.”

As part of the agreement, MARA will work with Starwood Capital Group’s data center development arm, Starwood Digital Ventures, 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 power rich sites give customers what they need most: predictable access to energy at scale. Our partnership with Starwood will allow us to turn that power certainty into capacity certainty, so customers can run diverse workloads close to their data and users,” MARA’s Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement.

The partnership will focus on sites that have access to low-cost energy and strong grid interconnection positions, which would then support both Bitcoin mining operations and AI-driven high-performance computing workloads.

The companies expect to deliver approximately 1 gigawatt of near-term IT capacity, with plans to scale that figure to more than 2.5 gigawatts over time.

MARA shares surged more than 15% in after-market trading following the announcement of the Starwood partnership. Shareholders perceived the joint venture as a strategic diversification move, especially after the company’s disappointing earnings report revealed a $1.7 billion quarterly net loss and falling revenues.

As previously reported by crypto.news, crypto mining stocks, including MARA, have struggled over the past months as a result of a market-wide downturn and tight profit margins.

At the same time, a powerful winter storm in January pushed Bitcoin hashrate to a seven-month low as several U.S. miners had to power down or throttle operations to ease pressure on strained electricity grids.