MARA Holdings has a $79 million, four-year GPU service contract with a payment term: its customer pays for all reserved capacity, including capacity it leaves unused. Majority-owned subsidiary Exaion signed the agreement with its first U.S. customer, MARA said in its third-quarter 2026 results announced on November 9. The contract gives MARA a customer-backed compute project as it seeks tenants for data centers and pursues Exaion sales prospects valued at more than $3 billion.
Take-or-pay puts unused GPU capacity on the customer’s bill
Exaion’s agreement is 100% take-or-pay. If the customer reserves GPUs and runs workloads on only part of them, it still owes for the full contracted service. The $79 million figure covers the four-year term; it is not a quarterly revenue figure.
MARA identified the buyer as Exaion’s first U.S. customer. That signed agreement provides a different kind of commitment from a sales prospect: payment is tied to reserved capacity rather than the customer’s eventual use of it. It also gives Exaion a U.S. contract while MARA seeks customers for its powered sites.
MARA’s November 9 results announcement points investors to its unaudited third-quarter shareholder letter. In it, Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel set out the company’s next task:
Our priority now is to convert those advantages into signed customer agreements, completed projects, and durable free cash flow.
Fred Thiel, MARA chairman and CEO
The $3 billion pipeline has a different status
MARA values Exaion’s prospective business at more than $3 billion in total contract value, including about $1 billion targeted for delivery by the end of 2027. Those prospects are not contracted or committed, and MARA said its goal of signing two data center leases before the end of 2026 could slip into 2027.
A lease needs a tenant’s signature before it creates a comparable customer commitment. Until then, the Exaion agreement is the signed GPU deal MARA can point to. Its take-or-pay term sets out what the customer must pay if its demand for GPU time falls below the capacity it booked.
The quarterly results show why signed compute revenue matters
MARA reported $164.2 million in third-quarter revenue, down from $252.4 million a year earlier. The company said the average price of bitcoin mined fell 37% from the year-earlier quarter, weighing on revenue despite higher production. Those results show the scale of MARA’s existing business beside a GPU contract valued at $79 million across four years.
Net income included an $885.3 million unrealized gain from marking MARA’s bitcoin holdings to fair value as bitcoin rose during the quarter. That gain does not show how much customers paid MARA for compute capacity.
MARA also gave production, sales and balance-sheet figures for the quarter:
- Mining: MARA produced 2,247 bitcoin in the third quarter.
- Sales: It sold 3,891 bitcoin during the quarter at an average price of $75,300.
- Holdings: It held 34,012 bitcoin, including coins loaned or pledged as collateral, and $946.5 million in cash and cash equivalents on September 30.
The sales figure exceeded the quarter’s production figure by 1,644 bitcoin. MARA also ended September with a substantial bitcoin position, which remained part of its balance sheet as it pursued GPU customers.
Debt repayment changes the capital picture, not the lease deadline
After the quarter ended, MARA sold 13,597 bitcoin and repaid $750 million in debt. That repayment returned 17,477 bitcoin that had been pledged as collateral. The loans had been arranged during the quarter to fund MARA’s planned Long Ridge power-plant acquisition.
The sequence matters for the company’s available assets: it borrowed against bitcoin during the quarter, then sold bitcoin after quarter-end to repay the loans and release the pledged coins. Those completed transactions are distinct from the two data center leases MARA is targeting. The company’s SEC filing provides its record of the quarter.
MARA’s board also authorized a share repurchase program of up to $500 million after quarter-end. The program sets a maximum amount for repurchases; the separately reported $750 million debt repayment has already taken place. The next deadline is MARA’s target to sign two data center leases by December 31, 2026.
