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Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings shares rose about 15% in early trading Thursday after the company announced plans to acquire a Texas powered-land site with access to up to 2 gigawatts of electricity for AI computing and Bitcoin mining.
The 1,200-acre site in Matagorda county, about 90 miles southwest of Houston, is expected to provide access to an initial 1 GW of grid capacity by October 2027 and up to 2 GW by April 2028. MARA said it plans to develop the site as a digital infrastructure campus supporting both high-performance computing and Bitcoin mining.
Upon full energization, the site is expected to more than double the Bitcoin (BTC) miner's potential power capacity to about 4.8 GW. HIF USA will retain a minority ownership stake in the project if MARA signs a lease with a high-performance computing tenant, according to the companies. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the transaction.<img alt="" height="991" src="https://s3-images.ctmedia.io/media/content/screenshot-2026-07-09-at-100725-am.png" width="1788">
Source: <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MARA/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Yahoo Finance</a>
In a post on X, MARA <a href="https://x.com/MARA/status/2075191577324990608?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">said</a> the project remains in the early stages of development and is subject to regulatory approvals, adding that construction will be phased over several years.
In April, MARA announced it would acquire Long Ridge Energy &amp; Power, adding a 505-megawatt gas-fired power plant and a co-located <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-miner-mara-to-acquire-power-plant-in-15b-deal-shares-up-12" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">data center in Ohio</a>, in a roughly $1.5 billion transaction. Earlier this year, the company acquired a 64% stake in French computing infrastructure operator Exaion.
MARA is the fourth-largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin (BTC), with 36,303 BTC, according to <a href="https://bitcointreasuries.net" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">data</a> from BitcoinTreasuries.NET.
Related: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-biz-ai-exit-strategy-bitcoin-miners" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Crypto Biz: Is AI the exit strategy for miners?</a>
<h2 id="btc-miners-bet-big-on-ai-data-centers">BTC miners bet big on AI data centers</h2>
Bitcoin miners have increasingly expanded into <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/features/bitcoin-miners-ai-data-centers-power-infrastructure" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">AI and high-performance computing</a> as demand for data center capacity has grown. Rather than repurposing mining hardware, companies are leveraging existing power infrastructure built to support BTC mining, including grid connections, substations and energized sites.
However, converting mining sites into AI-ready data centers requires significant investment. CoinShares <a href="https://coinshares.com/corp/insights/research-data/bitcoin-mining-report-q1-2026/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">estimates</a> mining infrastructure typically costs $700,000 to $1 million/MW, compared with $8 million to $15 million/MW for liquid-cooled AI infrastructure, while hyperscale customers require higher power density and uptime than many mining facilities were designed to provide.
Even so, several publicly traded miners have announced multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure agreements in recent months. Core Scientific expanded its hosting agreement with CoreWeave to more than $10 billion, while Hut 8 signed a 15-year, $7 billion data center lease with Fluidstack. TeraWulf has reported billions of dollars in contracted HPC revenue.
Investors have broadly rewarded the strategy. Hut 8 shares jumped about 20% after announcing its Fluidstack <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/hut-8-shares-jump-ex-bitcoin-miner-signs-7-billion-ai-data-center-lease-2025-12-17/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">agreement</a>, while companies with AI and HPC contracts have traded at higher valuation multiples than miners focused solely on Bitcoin production, according to a report from CoinShares.
Last week, <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/terawulf-shares-rise-after-19b-anthropic-ai-lease-jv-sale" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">TeraWulf shares rose about 12%</a> after the Bitcoin miner announced a 20-year AI data center lease with Anthropic, expected to generate roughly $19 billion in contract revenue.
MARA is the sixth-largest holding in the sector exchange-traded fund CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF, as 4.76% of <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WGMI/holdings/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">assets</a>, according to Yahoo Finance data. WGMI shares were up more than 5% in early afternoon trading on Thursday.
Magazine: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/features/bigger-blocks-or-stark-proofs-bitcoins-quantum-dilemma" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Bitcoin’s quantum dilemma: Bigger blocks or STARK proofs?</a>

MARA shares surge after 2 GW Texas infrastructure deal expands AI ambitions

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