Happy Monday!

Today, we cover a lawsuit against Bitcoin miner MARA regarding its Exaion acqusition. Plus, KBW re-rates a few of our favorite names including Core Scientific, CleanSpark, and more.

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French adviser François Garcin and three affiliated entities have filed suit against Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) in the Souther District of New York, alleging the bitcoin miner failed to pay a fees for their consultation to acquire control of French AI/HPC company Exaion.

The complaint alleges MARA then moved away from a France-centered strategy that Garcin had been retained to develop. It also accuses senior executives of resisting the European expansion and removing French leaders and consultants.

“This lawsuit was filed by a former contractor following the end of a business relationship. We believe the allegations are fabricated or completely without merit, and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against them through the legal process,” MARA told Blockspace.

From first glance, I would assume this lawsuit gets resolved relatively quickly. Perhaps MARA settles with Garcin over the alleged unpaid fees and we move on. These lawsuits happen and are not that interesting in and of themselves.

The larger story is MARA’s constantly pivoting narrative. A few years ago, they were the largest bitcoin miner by hashrate, with the largest bitcoin treasury of any public bitcoin miner to boot. From this position, it touted its ‘Twin Turbo’ strategy of bitcoin mining and bitcoin accumulation (making it a quasi-treasury company in addition to a bitcoin miner).

Then AI captured investor attention and MARA tells the market they are not interested — and moreover, that the deals thus-far struck by bitcoin miners were no good. A few months later, MARA settles on “Inference on the edge,” where MARA would use its data centers to service inference over training.

Fast forward, MARA announced its European expansion with a controlling stake in Exaion, and then it back tracks to the USA, first by partnering with data center developer Starwood for data center construction, and then with its ongoing acquisition of Long Ridge Energy.

A lot of narratives for IR to juggle when drafting MARA’s slide deck.

The lawsuit claims that CEO Fred Thiel and CFO Salman Khan were never sold on the French expedition, with the former allegedly recommending they kill it in the crib 13 days before MARA announced the deal’s consummation on February 20, 2026. Perhaps it truly was too expensive, and MARA decided it was better to get out than stay in.

But for better or worse, they are in now. From this chair, we see a struggling stock with little momentum compared to its peers who are signing major AI deals with hyperscalers and investment grade backers. Right now, its unclear how MARA catches up, and whether Exaion will actually spur the pace.

KBW said Monday that the selloff in bitcoin miner stocks since June primarily removed the value assigned to future AI/HPC leases rather than repricing completed projects at higher cap rates.

KBW downgraded Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) to Market Perform from Outperform on Monday and lowered its price target to $25 from $28. Core Scientific shares were listed at $22.75 in the July 27 research note. Stephen Glagola, the KBW analyst who authored the note, said expectations for new AI/HPC leases had moved ahead of Core Scientific's recent signing record.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia is in talks with OpenAI to provide a $250 billion backstop to a proposed 10 GW data center in Ohio. Soft Bank’s energy development arm, SB Energy, is leading construction for the project, which is expected to cost $500 billion with an initial rollout of 800 MW in 2028.

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