Bitcoin Miners” AI Pivot Accelerates.

Par DCN Editorial Team
Publié le 9 July 2026

Bitcoin (BTC)

A Massive Infrastructure Deal That Redefines MARA’s Positioning

The Bitcoin mining industry is undergoing a profound transformation, and MARA Holdings Inc. is today at its epicenter. On July 9, 2026, the largest publicly listed Bitcoin miner announced a 2-gigawatt (GW) infrastructure agreement in Texas, marking a decisive step in its diversification strategy toward artificial intelligence. This deal, estimated to be worth $2.1 billion over its duration, positions MARA not merely as a cryptocurrency miner but as a central player in computing infrastructure for AI. The announcement immediately propelled MARA’s stock, which surged more than 12% in trading following the release, confirming the market’s appetite for this new narrative.

The Texas partnership plans to deploy 2 GW of computing capacity dedicated to training and inference of artificial intelligence models. Concretely, MARA will convert a significant portion of its existing mining facilities — already equipped with liquid cooling, redundant power supply, and fiber optic connectivity — into high-performance data centers for AI. This approach offers a major competitive advantage: where a new traditional data center requires 3 to 5 years of development, MARA can repurpose existing infrastructure in 12 to 18 months, with infrastructure costs up to 40% lower than those of a greenfield project.

This announcement is part of a broader trend of convergence between Bitcoin mining and the AI industry. Miners indeed possess resources that technology hyperscalers are actively seeking: privileged access to abundant and competitively priced energy sources (often renewable or surplus), cutting-edge cooling equipment, and operational expertise in managing high-density energy computing parks. What was initially perceived as a mere coincidence of needs is today becoming a deliberate industrial strategy.

Insider Sales: An Alarm Signal in the Pivot Toward AI

But the euphoria surrounding this historic deal is tempered by a more troubling reality. While MARA and other miners announce ambitious pivots toward AI, several mining company executives have taken advantage of rising stock prices to sell significant blocks of their holdings. SEC filing data shows that insider sales in the Bitcoin mining sector increased by 340% in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the previous quarter, a figure that raises questions about the sincerity of the transformation narrative.

At MARA specifically, the chief financial officer and two board members have sold approximately $4.7 million worth of shares over the past two weeks, according to SEC Form 4 filings. These sales, while legal and often scheduled as part of 10b5-1 trading plans, come at a strategic moment when the company is heavily communicating about its AI pivot. The question investors are asking is legitimate: if executives truly believe in the value-creation potential of this transformation, why are they selling their shares now?

This paradox is not unique to MARA. Core Scientific, which emerged from bankruptcy in January 2026 after a successful pivot toward AI (the company now dedicates 70% of its capacity to AI versus 30% to mining), saw its COO sell $2.1 million worth of shares in June. Cipher Mining and TeraWulf, two mid-sized miners described by CoinDesk analysts as “cheap” according to AI valuation metrics, have also recorded notable insider sales.

The market seems for now to be distinguishing between factors. Analysts at CoinTelegraph note that insider sales in the technology sector are structurally higher during periods of strategic transition, as executives diversify their personal portfolios. Nevertheless, the amount and timing of these sales deserve sustained attention, especially as the Bitcoin mining sector is only just emerging from a severe consolidation period marked by the bankruptcy of several major players in 2024-2025.

AI Contracts: The New Barometer of Miner Value

Perhaps the most significant evolution highlighted by analysts is this: artificial intelligence contracts, and no longer the price of Bitcoin, now determine the valuation of listed miners. This is the striking conclusion of a CoinDesk analysis published on July 9, which observes that the correlation between BTC price and miner stocks has fallen to its lowest historical level, while the correlation between AI contract announcements and miner stock movements is reaching new heights.

This paradigm shift can be explained by several factors. First, the profit margin of pure mining operations is under structural pressure: the halving of April 2024 cut the block reward in half, while mining difficulty continues to rise with the arrival of new, more efficient ASIC machines. In this context, a high-margin multi-year AI contract offers revenue visibility that Bitcoin mining — subject to the volatility of BTC price and network difficulty — cannot provide.

Second, the valuation metrics for AI contracts are far more favorable. Where a Bitcoin mining operation typically generates an EBITDA margin of 30 to 45% depending on BTC price and electricity cost, a computing power lease contract for AI can yield margins of 60 to 75%, with commitment durations of 3 to 5 years. For institutional investors, this cash-flow predictability justifies higher valuation multiples.

According to CoinDesk analysts, Cipher Mining and TeraWulf appear as the most attractive values in the sector under this new reading grid. Cipher Mining, which signed a 300 MW contract in May with an undisclosed AI cloud provider, trades at 8.5 times forecast EBITDA, compared to an average of 14.2 times for its peers that have announced similar AI pivots. TeraWulf, which has converted 60% of its mining capacity to AI, has a price-to-book ratio of 1.3, significantly below the median for the AI data center sector (3.8).

This dynamic creates a powerful demonstration effect. Miners that have not yet announced a significant AI pivot — such as Riot Platforms or CleanSpark — are under pressure to unveil their own diversification strategies. Riot, which has 1.2 GW of contracted electricity capacity in Texas, is regularly cited by analysts as the next likely candidate for an announcement of this nature.

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