MARA Holdings is finalizing control of French AI and high-performance computing specialist Exaion, a move that would turn a public Bitcoin miner into a direct owner of sovereign-sensitive digital infrastructure.
MARA Targets European AI Infrastructure as Fellow Miner Bitdeer Erases BTC Stash
22 February 2026 - 21:08 CET
By Sandmark staff
The transaction, disclosed by MARA in a 20 Feb press release, was cleared by French authorities on condition of a domestic investor taking a stake. NJJ Capital is a strategic partner in the deal while Paris-based EDF Pulse Ventures will remain a minority investor and customer. MARA CEO Fred Thiel and Exaion’s CEO and co-founder Xavier Niel will join Exaion’s board.
Capacity squeeze
The deal, which was first publicly disclosed in August 2025, speaks to an urgent capacity squeeze for AI-ready data centres and a tightening European posture on foreign investment in digital infrastructure.
Bitdeer, another miner, said on 19 Feb it would sell debt securities as it pivots from pure cryptocurrency hosting and mining to GPU-heavy AI cloud services. Underscoring the strategic shift, the company followed up a day later by declaring on X it had sold its entire Bitcoin holdings. It had earlier reported ownership of 2,017 bitcoins at the end of 2025.
Independent analyses show AI workloads are driving demand for specialized, high-density facilities that few operators can build at scale. McKinsey’s recent work projects AI-ready capacity demand growing sharply through 2030. Meanwhile the IMF has also flagged the rapid scaling of data-centre energy and capital needs.
EU investment screening
The EU has tightened foreign-investment screening for critical and "hyper-critical" technologies meaning that cross-border digital infrastructure deals carry political as well as commercial approval risk.
