New York, May 22, 2026, 15:03 (EDT)
- MARA traded near $14 on Friday, outpacing a weaker bitcoin tape.
- The move came as Wall Street rose broadly before the Memorial Day weekend.
- Investors are still weighing MARA’s shift from pure bitcoin mining into power-backed AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
MARA Holdings shares rose on Friday, pushing close to $14 as investors stayed with crypto-linked infrastructure names even while bitcoin itself slipped. Barchart showed MARA at $13.99, up 3.25%, while bitcoin traded near $76,450, down about 1.6%.
The timing matters. MARA, once viewed mainly as a bitcoin miner — a company that uses computing power to process bitcoin transactions and earn newly issued coins and fees — is trying to persuade investors it should be valued as a power and data-center business too.
That pitch landed on a risk-friendly tape. Wall Street’s main indexes rose on Friday, with Reuters reporting gains for the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq, while U.S. markets head into a Monday closure for Memorial Day.
There was no new company release driving the move. The stock’s latest leg instead sat against the backdrop of MARA’s still-fresh effort to turn energy assets, mining sites and bitcoin holdings into a broader AI and high-performance computing platform. High-performance computing, or HPC, refers to large-scale computing used for demanding workloads such as artificial intelligence.
MARA’s first-quarter shareholder letter said revenue fell 18% to $174.6 million from a year earlier and that the company mined 2,247 bitcoin in the quarter. It also reported a $1.3 billion net loss, hit by a $1.0 billion fair-value loss tied to its digital assets as bitcoin prices fell during the quarter.
The company has been trying to change that story. MARA agreed in April to buy Long Ridge Energy & Power for about $1.5 billion including debt, a deal that would give it a gas-fired power plant in Ohio and more than 1,600 acres for a planned data-center campus. Chief Executive Fred Thiel told Reuters the site had “all the key components” for that use. Reuters
Its latest company update on the transaction came on May 15, when MARA said it had received the required consents from holders of Long Ridge’s 8.750% senior secured notes. The company said the deal could close as soon as the third quarter, but still needs regulatory approvals, including Hart-Scott-Rodino clearance and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval.
MARA also leaned on its bitcoin treasury earlier this year. In March, it said it sold 15,133 bitcoin for about $1.1 billion and planned to use proceeds to repurchase convertible notes. Thiel called the sale “a strategic capital allocation move” meant to strengthen the balance sheet and support long-term growth. MARA
The peer tape was constructive but not uniform. Riot Platforms traded at $24.78, up 1.27%, while CleanSpark traded at $16.32, up 3.55%, according to Barchart snapshots. Riot, another bitcoin miner pushing into data centers, said last month AMD had exercised an option for another 25 megawatts, bringing contracted capacity to 50 megawatts.
But the risk is still plain. MARA’s shares can trade like a leveraged proxy for bitcoin, and the company’s own first-quarter numbers showed how quickly digital-asset marks can swamp operations. Its power strategy also depends on closing Long Ridge, signing tenants and converting megawatts into contracted revenue; if approvals slip, bitcoin weakens, or AI tenants demand tougher economics, Friday’s rally could fade fast.
