MARA Holdings (Nasdaq: MARA) is one of the leading crypto companies and the world’s largest publicly listed Bitcoin (BTC) miner. It is also one of the largest holders of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin mining is the process of using specialized computing systems to solve cryptographic functions to verify and add blocks containing BTC transactions to the blockchain network. In return, miners receive rewards in the form of newly minted BTC.
As Bitcoin mining is no longer as profitable as earlier due to lower rewards and declining price, many miners are pivoting to running artificial intelligence (AI).
Related: What is Bitcoin mining? Explained
MARA ventures into AI, trims Bitcoin holdings
MARA Holdings is no exception, as it is also dedicating its resources to running AI operations. The company has already deployed AI inference racks at its Granbury, Texas data center.
In August last year, MARA acquired a 64% stake in Exaion, a firm that develops and operates high-performance computing (HPC) data centers and provides secure cloud and AI infrastructure.
In November, MARA announced that MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) will facilitate natural gas supply from its Delaware plants to MARA’s planned electricity generation facilities in West Texas. The goal is to transition to advanced AI/HPC workloads.
The company made a major announcement on March 26 this year that it sold 15,133 Bitcoin for approximately $1.1 billion during March 4-25, reducing its holdings to 38,689 BTC. It said it sold Bitcoin to strengthen its balance sheet.
It wasn’t a shocking announcement then, given that Bitcoin had dropped 45% lower than its record high price of $126,080 that it had reached in October 2025.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:
MARA moves 1,000 Bitcoin
On June 16, the onchain analytics platform Lookonchain claimed that MARA has purchased 1,000 Bitcoin worth $66.7 million via the FalconX crypto prime brokerage platform.
However, VanEck’s digital assets research head Matthew Sigel disputed the claim, saying these are returned lent coins, not open market purchases.
