Crusoe sells troubled Wyoming data center project to Google

Crusoe, an eight-year-old, Denver-based data center developer recently valued at $30.9 billion, confirmed Friday it has sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google. Google, which Crusoe had tried and failed to land as a customer for the project, is taking over the development after reportedly raising concerns about its cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management. Crusoe initially announced the project last year with Blackstone-backed infrastructure company Tallgrass, planning to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Google did not disclose how much it paid Crusoe for the unfinished project, bu it announced plans to invest $17 billion to develop the data center campus. The deal highlights how difficult it can be for independent data center developers to deliver massive projects on time and within budget, given the challenges of securing equipment and power. Growing opposition from local communities can further complicate development. Despite taking over the Wyoming facility, Google hasn’t walked away from working with Crusoe entirely. Crusoe is developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas. The deal to sell the site to Google was first reported by Bloomberg in June, but the Wyoming setback didn’t stop Crusoe from raising a $3.9 billion round in September. Crusoe makes money by leasing data center space to customers that bring their own GPUs, by renting out its own GPUs, and by selling compute power used to run AI models, known as inference. Crusoe’s largest projects serve some of the biggest names in AI. Its campus in Abilene, Texas, is being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, and the company is also constructing a separate 900-megawatt campus next door for Microsoft, with its first building expected to come online in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer, and Bloomberg reported that the trading firm Jane Street signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal with Crusoe. Crusoe was founded by Chase Lochmiller, now its CEO, and Cully Cavness, who started it as a cryptocurrency-mining business powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off. In September, alongside its $3.9 billion funding round, the company added three board members, including JB Straubel, the Redwood Materials founder and Tesla board member who invested in Crusoe in 2021. Crusoe later became the first customer of Straubel’s energy-storage business. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her career, Marina was a financial analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation. You can contact or verify outreach from Marina by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at +1 347-683-3909 on Signal.