MARA Holdings, a leading Bitcoin miner, has announced a significant $168 million deal to acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, a subsidiary of the French state-owned Électricité de France, marking its first major venture into artificial intelligence (AI).

This acquisition aligns with a growing trend in the cryptocurrency industry towards integrating artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, particularly as miners seek to enhance profitability following the Bitcoin halving in April 2024.

MARA's strategy sets it apart from other mining companies by focusing on AI inference operations, which generally incur lower overhead costs.

CEO Fred Thiel highlighted the partnership's potential to enhance data protection and energy efficiency, aiming to deliver secure and scalable cloud solutions for future AI applications.

The move into AI comes at a time when Bitcoin mining difficulty has surged, increasing energy consumption and impacting miner profitability, thus necessitating more efficient operational strategies.

Despite being the largest Bitcoin miner by production and market capitalization, MARA was one of the last major players to invest in AI, opting to partner with an established entity rather than retrofit existing mining facilities.

The acquisition is expected to allow Exaion to expand its operations internationally, serving both enterprise and public-sector clients, with the deal projected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending necessary approvals.

The agreement includes an option for MARA to increase its ownership stake in Exaion to 75% for an additional $127 million, contingent on meeting specific performance milestones.

Exaion specializes in high-performance computing data centers and collaborates with major companies like Nvidia and Deloitte to provide AI and cloud infrastructure.

MARA is recognized as the largest Bitcoin miner by market capitalization and is the second-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.

If the deal is finalized, MARA will acquire the stake from EDF Pulse Ventures, while EDF will retain a minority share in Exaion.

In the second quarter of 2025, MARA reported a remarkable adjusted EBITDA increase of over 1,000% year-on-year, earning $808.2 million compared to a net loss of nearly $200 million in the same quarter the previous year.