MARA Holdings has acquired a 64% controlling interest of Exaion, a French based computing Infrastructure company that has large backing from the energy company EDF. The acquisition closed this week after completing all necessary regulatory approvals and the cash agreement of $168 million originally struck in August 2025. EDF will remain a customer and hold minority equity ownership. In addition to this, as part of a strategic partnership with NJJ Capital – owned by Xavier Niel – NJJ Capital is acquiring 10% of MARA France. There will be representation on the board by both Fred Thiel (CEO of MARA) and Niel, three MARA representatives, three representatives from EDF Pulse Ventures, one representative from NJJ and Exaion's CEO. This is now the second major evidence pointing towards the deterioration of Bitcoin mining as a stand alone business model. Companies that successfully market and sell computing power into two using use cases will be the only ones left to stay successful over time. <h2>The Post-Halving Math That Forces the Pivot</h2> Due to the halving, block rewards decreased to<a href="https://forklog.com/en/bitcoin-mining-in-2025-the-harshest-profitability-squeeze-on-record-amid-all-time-highs/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://forklog.com/en/bitcoin-mining-in-2025-the-harshest-profitability-squeeze-on-record-amid-all-time-highs/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">3.125 BTC in April 2024</a>. Just this change would have caused margin tightening. Not only that, hash price (the revenue generated from daily sale of bitcoin mining) dropped to around<a href="https://www.ccn.com/education/crypto/bitcoin-mining-roi-1000-days-hash-revenue-down-35-survival-explained/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.ccn.com/education/crypto/bitcoin-mining-roi-1000-days-hash-revenue-down-35-survival-explained/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$35 per P/H/s</a>, and at the same time, hash rate saw significant increase in growth rate through 2025, driving difficulty up to all-time highs. As of Q2/2025, average costs of production for one bitcoin have increased to $70,000. Only miners that are using 2nd generation ASIC, with power costs less than $0.04 /kWh will be able to continue mining; bitcoin prices reached $126,000 in October 2025. The remaining miners were suffering losses. Last quarter, MARA reported<a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/390668/mara-completes-purchase-of-majority-stake-in-french-data-center-unit" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/390668/mara-completes-purchase-of-majority-stake-in-french-data-center-unit" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">record quarterly profits</a> of $123 million; these were a result of a hybrid business model containing both new AI and power assets, in addition to their current bitcoin mining operation. These earnings do not reflect solely on their current bitcoin mining operations. The stock price for MARA fell 40% year on year throughout 2025 and has fallen 17% further so far this year. The message that MARA is getting from investors is consistent with all other miners operating businesses exposed to bitcoin, "your business model as a miner of bitcoin is no longer economically viable." In response to this market signal, MARA has announced Exaion. <h2>What Exaion Actually Brings to the Table</h2> Exaion is not a very powerful hyperscaler. In 2024, it opened its first facility in Sherbrooke, Canada, and now has<a href="https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/mara-acquires-majority-stake-in-edfs-exaion/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/mara-acquires-majority-stake-in-edfs-exaion/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">four data centers</a> with 1,250 GPUs. It provides computational services, manages private cloud environments, and even houses a Quandela quantum computer. Its infrastructural DNA, not scale, is what gives it strategic value. Exaion was constructed by EDF, the national energy provider of France, which in 2025 brought in<a href="https://ir.mara.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1407/mara-and-edf-pulse-ventures-sign-investment-agreement-in-subsidiary-exaion-to-expand-maras-global-aihpc-capabilities" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://ir.mara.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1407/mara-and-edf-pulse-ventures-sign-investment-agreement-in-subsidiary-exaion-to-expand-maras-global-aihpc-capabilities" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">€113.3 billion</a> and, thanks to its nuclear fleet, operates one of the least expensive and carbon-intensive grids in Europe.The true asset is that access to energy. Bitcoin miners are already more knowledgeable than nearly everyone in the tech industry on power procurement, thermal management, and high-density rack deployment. They haven't had the cloud service layer or the enterprise clientele to make money off of those features beyond hashing. In a European market that is in dire need of sovereign data center capacity, Exaion provides MARA with a platform to offer cloud services, machine learning workloads, and GPU-accelerated AI compute—all fueled by nuclear energy. <h2>The Industry-Wide Stampede From Hashrate to GPUs</h2> MARA is not unique; MARA is walking the same path as half of the publicly traded companies in the mining sector. Previously known as a cryptocurrency mining operation, CoreWeave, today operates 32 data centres containing 250,000+ GPUs and has signed an<a href="https://www.coreweave.com/news/coreweave-announces-agreement-with-openai-to-deliver-ai-infrastructure" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.coreweave.com/news/coreweave-announces-agreement-with-openai-to-deliver-ai-infrastructure" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$11.9 billion deal</a> with OpenAI. The company went public in March 2025 at a $23 billion valuation and in January 2026<a href="https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-coreweave-strengthen-collaboration-to-accelerate-buildout-of-ai-factories" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-coreweave-strengthen-collaboration-to-accelerate-buildout-of-ai-factories" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NVIDIA invested $2 billion</a> into the company. Hut 8 signed a<a href="https://www.hut8.com/news-insights/press-releases/hut-8-signs-15-year-245-mw-ai-data-center-lease-at-river-bend-campus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.hut8.com/news-insights/press-releases/hut-8-signs-15-year-245-mw-ai-data-center-lease-at-river-bend-campus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$7 billion contract</a> to build a data centre powered by Google. In New York, TeraWulf partnered with Fluidstack to provide hundreds of megawatts of AI computing resources. CoreWeave has also entered into a<a href="https://investors.corescientific.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/74/core-scientific-to-provide-approximately-200-mw-of-infrastructure-to-host-coreweaves-high-performance-computing-services-capturing-significant-ai-compute-opportunity" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://investors.corescientific.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/74/core-scientific-to-provide-approximately-200-mw-of-infrastructure-to-host-coreweaves-high-performance-computing-services-capturing-significant-ai-compute-opportunity" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$3.5 billion hosting</a> and colocation agreement with Core Scientific to host 200 MW of HPC computing resources. Bitfarms has<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/02/06/bitfarms-says-it-s-no-longer-a-bitcoin-company-doubling-down-on-ai-with-u-s-move" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/02/06/bitfarms-says-it-s-no-longer-a-bitcoin-company-doubling-down-on-ai-with-u-s-move" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rebranded completely</a>, moving from a "Bitcoin company" to a company focused on providing AI infrastructure. HIVE Digital Technologies has a simple yet strong logical conclusion: The revenue generated by Bitcoin mining with 100 MW of electricity can equal the revenue generated by GPUs made by NVIDIA each producing an output equal to 10 MW each due to their larger processing speed. The financial value assigned to an AI contract is equal to 15 years with an average uptime of 0.99999%. With bitcoin mining there is no guarantee of a buyers and thus the daily hash price received from bitcoin mining is variable. When CleanSpark recently provided updates to investors that Bitcoin mining didn't make good financial sense with respect to the profitability generated from AI at the current hash prices (as of the first quarter of 2016). This statement from CleanSpark is certainly not a negative opinion on bitcoin; rather, CleanSpark is simply providing an accurate assessment of the state of bitcoin mining in calendar year 2016 utilizing current market based economic evaluations. <h2>What This Means for Bitcoin's Security Model</h2> The AI-pivot approach has failed to recognise that every kilowatt that is taken from Bitcoin's server to be used for AI-based computation reduces Bitcoin's ability to secure its network. The more kilowatt-hours used for AI increases the degree of centralisation in terms of who has control over the Hashrate, and therefore increases the ability of state sponsored miners to attack Bitcoin, resulting in a decrease in the number of miners with capital to retrofit their hardware to run on GPUs, and therefore the lower the amount of hashrate being secured on Bitcoin. Currently, the crisis does not exist; however, the hashrate is at an<a href="https://hashrateindex.com/blog/hashrate-index-roundup-december-22-2025/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://hashrateindex.com/blog/hashrate-index-roundup-december-22-2025/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">all-time high</a>. The current trend is towards increasing AI and decreasing Bitcoin due to the current market conditions. Due to the structural incentive structure towards using AI, we will see increased usage of AI and less usage of Bitcoin over the coming quarters, due to no significant increase in the Hashprice being paid to miners and continuing AI contracts providing higher compensation levels than being paid to Bitcoin miners. The unique design of Bitcoin has allowed for fluctuations in mining profitability based on the level of difficulty; however, the design was not intended to be viable in a future where there is a potential tenfold increase in income using another person's language model using the same amount of hardware and electricity to run those workloads as Bitcoin. <h2>What Crypto Investors Should Take From This</h2> A survival scenario disguised as a growth narrative is MARA's Exaion Deal. With the $168 million, MARA gains access to Europe's nuclear grid, a non-BTC revenue stream, and a cloud platform that can expand into AI markets with multi-year contract visibility. This lessens the link between MARA stock and the price of Bitcoin, which can be either a benefit or a drawback for traders who are keeping an eye on the stock. The mining sector is redefining itself as digital infrastructure, which is the larger signal for cryptocurrency. To address the demand for AI, McKinsey predicts that<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-cost-of-compute-a-7-trillion-dollar-race-to-scale-data-centers" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-cost-of-compute-a-7-trillion-dollar-race-to-scale-data-centers" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$6.7 trillion</a> will be invested globally in data centers by 2030. CoreWeave, Hut 8, and MARA, the miners that relocated early, are gaining that capital. Those who continued to play pure-play are seeing their margins shrink. Miners are not necessary for the long-term viability of Bitcoin. They must remain connected. And at the moment, every quarter, the economics make that more difficult.

MARA acquires 64% of French AI/HPC firm Exaion for $168M (closed Feb 2026), highlighting Bitcoin miners' shift to AI/cloud ops amid falling mining profits, backed by EDF's low-cost nuclear power.



From Bitcoin to AI: MARA's $168M Exaion Acquisition Signals Mining's Evolution



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