MARA buys 1,200-acre Texas power site; stock jumps

MARA Holdings agreed to acquire more than 1,200 acres in Matagorda County, Texas, from synthetic-fuels developer HIF USA. The property is about 90 miles southwest of Houston and will be developed as a computing campus for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers alongside Bitcoin mining operations.

The site is expected to have access to up to 1 gigawatt of grid capacity by October 2027 and as much as 2 gigawatts by spring 2028. MARA said it will develop the property with Starwood Digital Ventures and use the location for both HPC workloads and energy-intensive Bitcoin mining rigs.

HIF will retain a minority stake in the Matagorda property once a computing tenant signs a lease. The company will continue pursuing its synthetic-fuels projects at other sites in Texas and abroad.

MARA stated that, once fully built out, the acquisition would increase its total power portfolio to nearly 4.8 gigawatts, a figure that includes a previously announced Ohio power-plant purchase. Company and local officials estimate the project could generate thousands of construction jobs and a number of permanent positions for Matagorda County.

The announcement prompted a sharp stock move: MARA shares rose about 15% on the day of the disclosure and were trading with gains of more than 50% for 2026 at the time of the report. The company noted it has already invested over $1.2 billion in Texas.

Fred Thiel, MARA’s chairman and CEO, described the transaction as ‘advancing our strategy of securing infrastructure assets capable of supporting high-performance compute and Bitcoin workloads’ and said the acquisition expands the company’s long-term development pipeline.