Crusoe Offloads Unfinished Wyoming Data Center to Google

Crusoe, the Denver-based data center developer founded eight years ago and recently valued at $30.9 billion, confirmed Friday that it has sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google.

Google, which Crusoe had courted as a customer for the site without success, is taking over development after reportedly raising concerns about the project's cost and construction timeline under Crusoe's management.

Crusoe first announced the project last year with Tallgrass, a Blackstone-backed infrastructure company, with plans to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Google did not disclose the purchase price but said it plans to invest $17 billion to develop the data center campus.

The sale, first reported by Bloomberg in June, illustrates the difficulty independent developers face in delivering massive projects on time and on budget, given challenges securing equipment and power, with local opposition adding further complications.

Google hasn't cut ties with Crusoe entirely: Crusoe is developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas. The Wyoming setback also didn't stop Crusoe from raising a $3.9 billion round in September.

Crusoe earns money by leasing data center space to customers who bring their own GPUs, renting out its own GPUs, and selling inference compute used to run AI models. Its largest projects serve major AI players: a campus in Abilene, Texas, is being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, and the company is constructing a separate 900-megawatt campus next door for Microsoft, with its first building expected online in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer, and Bloomberg reported that trading firm Jane Street signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal with Crusoe.

Crusoe was founded by CEO Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness as a cryptocurrency-mining business powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off. In September, alongside its 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.

Source: TechCrunch