Marathon Digital is buying up Texas real estate like it’s playing a very expensive game of Monopoly. The Bitcoin mining giant plans to acquire 1,200 acres in the Lone Star State to build out a 1GW data center campus, with ambitions to scale that footprint to 2GW by 2028.

Marathon’s Texas empire takes shape

In November 2025, the company signed a letter of intent with MPLX to develop integrated power generation and data center facilities in West Texas. That deal started at 400MW of capacity with room to grow to 1.5GW.

Then in February 2026, Marathon announced a joint venture with Starwood Capital Group targeting approximately 1GW of near-term IT capacity. The long-term goal for that partnership is even more aggressive: scaling to over 2.5GW.

Back in April 2024, the company dropped $87.3 million on a 200MW Bitcoin mining data center in Garden City. In December 2024, it acquired a 114MW wind farm in Hansford County to power behind-the-meter mining operations.

As of late May 2026, CEO Fred Thiel reported that Marathon has more than 1.1GW of energized power capacity across its operations. The company expects to surpass 2GW through upcoming expansions and a transaction involving Long Ridge.

Why Texas, why now

Texas has become the undisputed capital of American Bitcoin mining. The state’s deregulated energy market means operators can negotiate directly with power providers. Texas also has an abundance of renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, which helps miners address sustainability concerns around proof-of-work mining.

Marathon has been positioning its infrastructure for dual-use across crypto mining and artificial intelligence workloads. AI training and inference require massive amounts of computational power, and the hyperscale data centers Marathon is building can theoretically serve both markets.

What this means for investors and the mining landscape

Energy costs represent the single largest expense for Bitcoin miners, and owning your power generation, as Marathon does with its Hansford County wind farm, can dramatically reduce that variable. As Bitcoin halvings continue to compress mining rewards, operational efficiency becomes the primary competitive moat.

The Starwood Capital partnership adds another dimension. Having a major institutional real estate investor as a partner lends credibility to the thesis that Bitcoin mining infrastructure is maturing into a legitimate asset class.

Investors should watch Marathon’s ability to execute on its 2028 timeline. Building 2GW of data center capacity in roughly two years is an aggressive target, even with 1,200 acres of land and deep-pocketed partners. Supply chain constraints for transformers and other grid equipment have plagued data center developers across the industry.