tl;dr
Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings is acquiring a 64% stake in Exaion, a French state-owned AI and HPC data center company, for $168 million, with an option to increase ownership to 75% by 2027 through an additional $127 million investment. Exaion partners with Nvidia and Deloitte and aims to expand intern...
Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings is making its biggest AI play to date by signing a $168 million deal to acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, a subsidiary of French state-owned Électricité de France, one of the world’s leading low-carbon energy producers. This agreement also includes an option for MARA to increase its ownership to 75% by 2027 through an additional $127 million investment, contingent on performance milestones.
Exaion focuses on developing high-performance computing (HPC) data centers and delivering AI and cloud infrastructure, partnering with industry heavyweights like Nvidia and Deloitte. MARA highlighted that this deal will allow Exaion to scale internationally, targeting enterprise and public-sector clients. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter, pending necessary approvals.
MARA CEO Fred Thiel emphasized the importance of combining data protection and energy efficiency, stating that the collaboration will enable the delivery of secure, scalable cloud solutions designed for the future of AI. This AI expansion by MARA comes amid a sharp rise in Bitcoin mining difficulty, which increases energy consumption and compresses miner profitability unless improvements in efficiency or energy cost reductions are achieved.
MARA stands as the largest Bitcoin miner by production, network hashrate, and market cap but has only recently made a significant move into AI. Thiel explained that MARA intentionally avoided the first wave of AI and HPC expansion, opting instead to invest in a partner with established expertise, customers, and a proven track record, allowing for quicker and more credible progress.
In July, MARA mined 703 Bitcoin, losing ground to competitor IREN, which mined a record 728 Bitcoin that month. This decrease was likely due to fewer active mining machines. Despite this, MARA's revenue surged 64% year-on-year to $238 million in Q2, and the company holds approximately 50,000 Bitcoin valued near $6 billion, ranking as the second-largest Bitcoin treasury after Michael Saylor’s Strategy.