MARA Partners With Starwood to Develop AI Data Centers

MARA Holdings Inc. is partnering with Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group to develop some of the Bitcoin miner’s existing sites into infrastructure that can support artificial intelligence applications and some other cloud services. MARA’s shares jumped around 15% in post-market trading.

Starwood Digital Ventures, the data center development platform for the private investment firm, will lead design, tenant sourcing, construction, and facility operations, while MARA contributes some of its sites. They are expected to deliver about one-gigawatt immediate capacity with a possibility of building up to 2.5 gigawatt, the crypto-mining company said in a statement on Thursday. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.