MARA Holdings rises 13% despite billion-dollar loss; focus turns to AI and infrastructure

The actions of MARA Holdings (MARA) registered an increase of 13% in the pre-market this Friday (February 27, 2026). The move comes even after the Bitcoin mining giant reported a net loss of US$ 1.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025. Investor optimism was boosted by the announcement of a strategic turnaround: the transformation of the company into an infrastructure provider for Artificial Intelligence (AI) e high performance computing (HPC).

Billion-dollar loss driven by Bitcoin's fair value

The financial result for the 4th quarter of 2025 was marked by extreme volatility. The loss of US$ 1.71 billion (US$ 4.52 per share) reversed the profit of US$ 528.3 million from the same period in 2024.

According to the balance sheet sent to the SEC, the main detractor was a devaluation of US$ 1.5 billion in the book value of digital assets. Under the new fair value accounting rules, MARA had to adjust its Bitcoin reserves after the currency retreated from around US$ 114,000 in September to US$ 88,000 at the close of December.

Main financial indicators (4Q25):

• Recipe: US$ 202.3 million (down 6% year on year).
• Bitcoin production: 2,011 BTC mined (fall of 6% vs 3Q25).
• Total reserves: 53,822 BTC (valued at approximately US$ 4.7 billion).

Betting on AI: Partnership with Starwood and acquisition of Exaion

The market ignored the accounting loss to focus on MARA's expansion beyond pure mining. The company announced a strategic joint venture with Starwood Digital Ventures to convert their energy-rich sites into next-generation data centers.

• Gigawatt capacity: The initial phase aims to 1 GW of IT infrastructure, with the potential to expand up to 2.5 GW.
• Load flexibility: MARA will hold up to 50% stakes in the projects, allowing it to alternate workloads between Bitcoin mining and AI processing as profitability dictates.

Complementing the transition, MARA finalized the acquisition of 64% from Exaion, a European company specializing in cloud and AI solutions. The move positions the mining company as an “AI factory”, taking advantage of cheap energy contracts to meet the growing demand for language model training and inference.

Market Context

MARA's strategy reflects an industry trend. With mining margins under pressure following the latest halving and the increase in network difficulty, miners such as Core Scientific and TeraWulf are also pivoting to the HPC sector. In the last six months, MARA's shares have accumulated a drop of 45%, but the positive reception to the new AI plan suggests a possible recovery in shareholder confidence in 2026.