Hart is a senior portfolio manager and global co-head of energy and power at Avenue Capital Group, where he leads the investment firm’s private-power strategy. His more than 25 years in the sector include power generation, infrastructure development, finance and private investing, MARA said.
Hart previously served as chief financial officer of US Power Generating Co., helping develop the independent power producer before it was sold to Tenaska Capital Management. He has also overseen investments in power-generation platforms including Middle River Power.
Novak previously served as chief innovation officer at Compass Datacenters, where she worked on large projects for hyperscale and cloud customers and promoted prefabrication and other industrialized construction methods. Compass now lists her as its chief innovation officer emeritus and an ambassador.
She has more than 35 years of construction experience and has overseen more than $5 billion of projects, according to Sims Limited, where she has served as an independent non-executive director since December 2025. Novak also serves on the board of environmental-services company Weston Solutions.
Their backgrounds align with MARA’s effort to convert its portfolio of power and land into infrastructure that can support both bitcoin mining and higher-performance computing.
In April, MARA agreed to acquire Long Ridge Energy & Power for about $1.5 billion, including assumed debt. The assets include a 505-megawatt natural-gas power plant in Ohio and a site with the potential to host more than one gigawatt of computing capacity. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
MARA then agreed in July to acquire more than 1,200 acres in Matagorda County, Texas, with access to as much as two gigawatts of grid capacity expected by April 2028. The company plans to develop the property with Starwood Digital Ventures for high-performance computing and bitcoin-mining workloads.
At full energization and assuming completion of the Long Ridge acquisition, the Texas project would more than double MARA’s potential power portfolio to about 4.8 gigawatts, the company said in its July announcement.
The expansion introduces development, financing and customer-acquisition risks that differ from MARA’s established mining operation. The company will need to build infrastructure quickly enough to attract AI and cloud tenants while managing exposure to construction costs and volatile power markets.
Humpton, president and CEO of Siemens USA, joined MARA’s board in September 2024 to add energy and infrastructure experience. Antoun, a former First Solar chief commercial officer, had served on the board since 2021. MARA did not disclose any disagreement connected with their departures.
The board transition comes two days before MARA is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Aug. 6. Shares closed Aug. 3 at $11.75, up 3.8%, and were indicated about 0.7% higher in early premarket trading on Tuesday.
