New York, July 12, 2026, 13:06 EDT
MARA Holdings, Inc. NASDAQ:MARA gave back about half of Thursday’s dollar gain on Friday as investors weighed a Texas power-site purchase that could cost up to $600 million but has no disclosed tenant. The shares closed at $12.60, down 4.7% on Friday after jumping 10% a day earlier, leaving them just 1.6% higher for the holiday-shortened week. U.S. stock markets were closed Sunday.
The filing behind the announcement shows MARA did not buy a finished data center. A subsidiary acquired a project company holding contracts to purchase land, title to an adjacent parcel and rights under a utility letter covering 2,000 megawatts of potential power. Payments depend on milestones including land purchases, regulatory clearance, authorization to receive power and the signing of a third-party data-center lease.
At the $600 million ceiling, the consideration equals about 12.5% of MARA’s current $4.79 billion market value and roughly 117% of the $513.7 million in cash it held at March 31. The bill is not due at once, but its scale puts financing and tenant execution alongside bitcoin prices as key inputs for the stock. MARA also reported $2.4 billion of digital assets at the end of March.
The more than 1,200-acre site is expected to offer one gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, of grid capacity by October 2027 and as much as two gigawatts by April 2028. Fully energized, it would account for about 42% of MARA’s stated potential 4.8-gigawatt portfolio. The company plans to use the land for bitcoin mining and high-performance computing, or HPC — the intensive processing used for artificial intelligence and other data-heavy work.
Chief Executive Fred Thiel said sites with “reliable, scalable power will become increasingly valuable.” HIF USA CEO Renato Pereira said the group had issued a notice to proceed for the switchyard, the high-voltage connection point between the property and the grid. The announcement cited interest from possible HPC tenants, but named no customer and disclosed no total construction budget. MARA
| MARA project | Announced transaction value | Stated power | Headline value per kilowatt | Economics already in place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matagorda County, Texas | Up to $600 million, paid by milestones | 2,000 MW potential | $300 | No disclosed lease; development and utility rights |
| Long Ridge, Ohio, from FTAI Infrastructure Inc. NASDAQ:FIP | About $1.5 billion including debt | 505 MW expected | About $2,970 | Operating gas plant; about $144 million of annualized adjusted earnings |
The nearly tenfold gap is not a like-for-like valuation. Long Ridge includes a running power plant, land and existing cash flow, while the Texas figure excludes the still-undisclosed cost of building the data-center campus. Even so, the comparison shows how much of Texas’s value depends on converting planned megawatts into a financed project and a paying customer.
That customer hurdle has become more visible across the sector. TeraWulf Inc. NASDAQ:WULF said last Monday that Anthropic signed a 20-year lease for a Kentucky campus with 401 megawatts of computing load, expected to generate about $19 billion of contracted revenue. Initial service is planned for the second half of 2027, close to MARA’s Texas schedule. TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager said the lease established “a long-duration revenue stream” — something MARA’s new site does not yet have. TeraWulf Inc.
| Asset | July 10 price or level | Change for the week |
|---|---|---|
| MARA Holdings NASDAQ:MARA | $12.60 | +1.6% |
| Riot Platforms, Inc. NASDAQ:RIOT | $20.97 | -5.2% |
| CleanSpark, Inc. NASDAQ:CLSK | $12.85 | +1.8% |
| Nasdaq Composite | 26,281.61 | +1.7% |
| Bitcoin | $63,220.69 | +5.4% |
Stock and bitcoin changes compare July 2 with July 10; the Nasdaq figure is the reported weekly move. MARA roughly tracked CleanSpark and the broader index, but lagged bitcoin by almost four percentage points. Its shares rose $1.20 on Thursday and then lost 62 cents on Friday, while trading volume fell to 45.8 million shares from 78.1 million. The tape suggests investors rewarded the added power pipeline, then marked down the distance to revenue.
But the downside case is plain. Regulatory or utility delays could push the 2027 and 2028 capacity dates back, and without a tenant the Texas property has no disclosed contracted revenue. MARA entered the quarter with about $2.42 billion of debt, used $247.5 million of operating cash in the first quarter and posted a $1.26 billion net loss, much of it caused by non-cash revaluation losses on digital assets. Funding Texas alongside Long Ridge could increase reliance on bitcoin sales, borrowing or new shares.
When Nasdaq trading resumes Monday, the wider market will turn to June consumer inflation data on Tuesday and producer prices on Wednesday, both at 8:30 a.m. EDT. June retail sales follow Thursday, while Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh testifies to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday. Those events may move interest rates, technology shares and bitcoin; for MARA, the cleaner company-specific catalyst remains a named tenant, a signed lease and a clearer split of who funds the Texas buildout.
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