MARA Drops $1.1B in BTC, Then Drops 15% of Its Employees in Dramatic 'Strategic' Pivot to AI

In a move that surprises absolutely no one who's been watching the crypto industry's talent for dramatic pivots, Bitcoin miner MARA has slashed 15% of its workforce just days after dumping a cool $1.1 billion worth of the flagship crypto. The company confirmed the layoffs to Decrypt, because apparently when you're pivoting to AI, fewer humans are part of the master plan.

The cuts affect full-time employees across multiple departments, with potential contractor casualties looming on the horizon like a final boss nobody asked to fight. Sources close to the matter—because there's always a "source close to the matter" in crypto news—confirmed the extent of the bloodbath.

"MARA remains focused on executing our strategic evolution from a pure-play Bitcoin miner into an energy and digital infrastructure company," a company spokesperson said, presumably while sipping water in a perfectly rehearsed media training voice. "As our company evolves, so too must our operations. We made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our team by approximately 15%." Nothing says "strategic evolution" quite like telling people their health insurance is getting Thanos-snapped.

CEO Fred Thiel, channeling his inner corporate poet, framed the layoffs in an internal memo as not "purely a financial decision—it's a strategic one." Cool, Fred. Whatever helps you sleep at night while 15% of your workforce updates their LinkedIn profiles.

"We're focusing the company in a new direction," Thiel continued, apparently unbothered by the irony of a Bitcoin miner pivoting away from Bitcoin. "That means the shape of our team needs to change with it." The shape of the team, apparently, being significantly smaller and wondering why they weren't included in the vision board.

The strategic shift toward AI data centers and compute is backed by actual partnerships, because saying "we're pivoting to AI" without partnerships would just be vibes. MARA has locked arms with Starwood Digital Ventures' data center platform and made an investment in Exaion, a European