MARA Slides as JPMorgan Questions Starwood Venture Economics

MARA Holdings fell 5.7% to $11.30 in premarket trading on September 14 after JPMorgan cut its rating on the bitcoin miner to Underweight from Neutral and reduced its price target to $11 from $13, according to market data and analyst-rating trackers. The new target sits only slightly below the stock’s indicated premarket price.

The downgrade lands as investors weigh whether MARA’s push into artificial-intelligence infrastructure can produce durable returns before its mining business loses more momentum. JPMorgan’s concern centers on the company’s partnership with Starwood Digital Ventures, under which MARA contributes power-rich land and operating sites while Starwood handles development, construction, tenant sourcing and operations. MARA can retain as much as a 50% stake in the resulting joint ventures, but the arrangement also means it will share the value created by converting those sites into data centers.

That tradeoff is central to the stock’s valuation. The partnership is designed to limit MARA’s upfront capital burden and give it access to Starwood’s development and hyperscale relationships. Yet investors must accept a smaller share of project economics, along with execution risk while proposed capacity moves from powered land to contracted, revenue-generating facilities. MARA said in February that the platform could deliver roughly 1 gigawatt of near-term IT capacity, with a pathway to more than 2.5 gigawatts, but those figures describe development potential rather than operating revenue today.

The company’s latest results gave skeptics fresh ammunition. Second-quarter revenue dropped 27% year over year to $174.9 million, while MARA posted a $611.3 million net loss, or $1.60 a share. The quarter included a large mark-to-market loss on bitcoin and other digital assets, underscoring how quickly earnings can swing even when mining output remains substantial. MARA reported 35,577 bitcoin held and 2,422 bitcoin produced during the quarter.

MARA has been trying to persuade shareholders that its scarce power access is worth more in AI and high-performance computing than in bitcoin mining alone. JPMorgan’s action suggests the market is demanding proof in the form of signed tenants, project milestones and cleaner cash generation, not just a larger development pipeline.