Another miner, another AI pivot

Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square) is cutting the company nearly in half – from 10,000+ employees to just under 6,000. Dorsey framed it as ripping the band-aid off now to run “smaller and flatter teams” with AI tools, and even warned that most companies will reach the same conclusion within a year. Markets, unsurprisingly, liked the brutal cost-cutting: Block (XYZ) stock jumped ~20% although the company is still ~75% below its covid-era highs. And while this was an AI headline, its last earnings release from November still leans hard into bitcoin, with bitcoin-related activity earning Block nearly $2 billion in Q3 (about a third of revenue). Read more →

MARA Holdings (MARA) reported a $1.7 billion net loss in the fourth quarter – a sharp swing from $528.3 million in profit a year earlier – yet shares jumped ~15% after the company announced a joint venture with Starwood Capital to build AI data centers. The loss was driven largely by a $1.5 billion decline in the value of its bitcoin holdings as prices fell around 30% in the quarter. Read more →

Figure (FIGR) – the fairly new fintech pubco that uses the blockchain to move home-equity loans around – just posted solid Q4 results: $159.9 million in net revenue, $15.1 million in net income (+156% YoY), $81.3 million of adjusted EBITDA (a 52% margin), plus a new $200 million share buyback authorization. Read more →

As a refresher, Figure is a lending-and-capital-markets plumbing company that uses blockchain as the back-end rail – not a token project by any means. They started with home-equity lines of credit (HELOCs) as the proving ground, then built a marketplace where those loans can be packaged and traded with less friction. The stock has slid 20% since earnings yesterday – but Q4 at least shows that marketplace piece growing, with Figure Connect volume rising to 54% of its consumer loan marketplace in the quarter (up from 46% prior).

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