Crusoe, an eight-year-old Denver-based data center developer valued at $30.9 billion, sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google on Friday. Google plans to invest $17 billion to develop the campus itself, taking over a facility Crusoe had initially sought to sell compute capacity to.
Google raised concerns about the project's cost and construction timeline under Crusoe's management. Crusoe had previously tried and failed to secure Google as a customer for the Wyoming site before the acquisition.
The deal exposes the execution challenges independent data center developers face at scale. Crusoe initially announced the Wyoming project last year in partnership with Blackstone-backed Tallgrass, with plans to reach 10 gigawatts of capacity. Securing equipment, power, and local approvals complicates such massive builds.
Despite losing Wyoming, Crusoe maintains a working relationship with Google elsewhere. The company is developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas—a shift that suggests strategic recalibration rather than a complete breakup.
Crusoe's business model stacks three revenue streams: leasing data center space for customer-supplied GPUs, renting proprietary GPUs, and selling AI inference compute. The model is capital-intensive, as reflected in its September funding round of $3.9 billion.
The capital infusion signals investor confidence in Crusoe's core business despite the Wyoming setback. The company counts several of the largest AI players as customers. Crusoe is building a phased campus in Abilene, Texas, for Oracle and OpenAI. A separate 900-megawatt campus adjacent to Abilene is under construction for Microsoft, with the first building expected online in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer.
Trading firm Jane Street signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal with Crusoe—the type of long-term contract that stabilizes revenue for large infrastructure builders.
Crusoe was founded by Chase Lochmiller, CEO, and Cully Cavness. The company started as a cryptocurrency-mining operation that burned natural gas otherwise destined for flaring—an early edge in energy-efficient compute infrastructure.
In September's funding round, Crusoe added three board members, including JB Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials and a Tesla board member. Straubel invested in Crusoe in 2021; Crusoe later became the first customer of Straubel's energy-storage business, creating a vertical integration play across the AI infrastructure supply chain.
Google's direct ownership of Wyoming underscores a strategic preference: controlling AI infrastructure buildout in-house rather than relying on third-party developers to meet deadlines and budgets. The move reduces execution risk for Google's expanding AI compute footprint.
