AI Policy Wiki
Dashboard
⚲

Crusoe

medium confidence · updated 2026-09-26

US AI data-center and cloud-infrastructure company, founded 2020, that originated using stranded and flared natural gas for GPU compute and now builds and operates full-stack AI campuses. Developer of the 1.2 GW Abilene, Texas campus that is the flagship Stargate site. Raised $1.375B Series E at a valuation above $10B in October 2025; announced the initial closing of an anticipated $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B post-money valuation on September 17, 2026.

Crusoe is a US-based AI cloud and data-center infrastructure company, founded in 2020 and headquartered in Denver and San Francisco, that describes itself as an "AI factory company." It began by powering GPU data centers with stranded or flared natural gas and has since expanded into building, owning, and operating full-stack AI campuses, including the 1.2-gigawatt Abilene, Texas site that is the flagship location of the Stargate buildout. It competes in the "neocloud" segment that rents GPU compute for AI training and inference.

Snapshot

Valuation

DateValueDetailSource
2026-09-17$30.9B post-moneyCompany-announced initial closing of an anticipated $3.9B Series F, co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners; more than $140B total contracted value(Source: crusoe.ai)
2026-09-03~$30BRound finalized: more than $3B raised, co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners with Mubadala Capital participating, per people familiar with the situation(Source: bloomberg.com)
2026-07-02~$30B (reported, in discussion)Bloomberg reported talks to raise about $3B; no round announced(Source: finance.yahoo.com)
2025-10>$10B$1.375B Series E co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital(Source: crusoe.ai)
2024-12$2.8B$600M round(Source: techfundingnews.com)
2022$1.75B$350M Series C led by G2 Venture Partners(Source: tsginvest.com)

Compute and capacity

DateFigureDetailSource
2026-09-176+ GW gross contracted; 1 GW delivered and operationalCompany figures at the Series F: more than $140B total contracted value; Crusoe Cloud bookings up more than 20× year over year, year to date(Source: crusoe.ai)
2026-07-151.0 GWChildress, Texas campus announced jointly with Lancium(Source: crusoe.ai)
2026-06~4.9 GW contracted; >40 GW pipelineMeta, Microsoft and Google reported among capacity purchasers(Source: tsginvest.com)
2026-09-04~$13B over five yearsCloud contract to supply GPUs and AI infrastructure to Jane Street; customers also reported to include Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI(Source: techcrunch.com)
2025-H1200+ MW energizedFirst Abilene phase: two buildings, 980,000 sq ft, within a campus expanded to 1.2 GW(Source: crusoe.ai)

Overview

Crusoe operates modular data centers co-located at energy production sites. Its original model uses stranded or flared natural gas — methane that would otherwise be vented or burned at oil and gas production sites — converting that energy into electricity for AI training and inference workloads. The company frames this approach as capturing otherwise wasted energy, while critics note that reliance on fossil-fuel extraction sites creates its own sustainability tensions.

The energy-sourcing strategy is the company's principal differentiator for customers with ESG commitments. Co-locating compute with energy production also bears on Data Center Siting / AI Power Politics: siting at the point of generation avoids the grid interconnection bottlenecks that can delay traditional data center builds.

Its cloud platform, Crusoe Cloud, is positioned as removing infrastructure management from AI development workloads. The company's stated strategy is vertical integration across power generation, campus construction, and cloud software — an ownership position that trade commentary contrasts with pure-play GPU rental (Source: crusoe.ai).

Abilene and the Stargate buildout

Crusoe developed the Abilene, Texas campus that serves as the first and flagship site of OpenAI's Stargate program. The company announced an expansion of the campus to 1.2 gigawatts, with an initial phase of two buildings totaling 980,000 square feet and more than 200 megawatts expected to be energized in the first half of 2025 (Source: crusoe.ai).

Crusoe raised $11.6 billion in debt and equity for the second phase of a $15 billion joint venture funding the campus (Source: datacenterdynamics.com). Under the structure reported by Sacra, Crusoe builds and co-owns the first Stargate data center — with financing from Blue Owl and JPMorgan — and leases it to Oracle, which operates it and rents the compute to OpenAI (Source: sacra.com).

In July 2026 Crusoe and Lancium announced a 1.0-gigawatt AI data center campus in Childress, Texas (Source: crusoe.ai).

Power supply

Crusoe's initial 1.2-gigawatt Abilene data center, built for Oracle and OpenAI, is powered by the grid according to the company, with a gas-turbine plant used only for backup; a separate 900-megawatt Abilene data center Crusoe is building for Microsoft is to be powered by on-site gas turbines (Source: techcrunch.com).

Crusoe had signed on as the first customer for Boom Supersonic's stationary power business, agreeing to spend $1.25 billion on 29 of Boom's 42-megawatt Superpower natural-gas turbines, with first deliveries due in 2027. Boom chief executive Blake Scholl said in a post on X on September 25, 2026 that the companies were no longer moving forward with the turbine launch partnership: "turbines are no longer part of Crusoe's near term primary power mix at Abilene/etc., so a launch partnership just didn't make sense," adding that Boom would deliver about 250MW of Superpowers to other sites the following year and was targeting 1GW in 2028. Crusoe confirmed it is no longer doing business with Boom; spokesperson Andrew Schmitt said the company chooses energy solutions site by site, "including turbines, along with wind, solar, batteries and the grid," and that "the partnership isn't the right fit today." Boom raised $300 million in 2025 largely to commercialize the turbine business, whose Superpower unit shares about 80% of its parts with the Symphony engine Boom is developing for its Overture supersonic jet (Source: techcrunch.com).

Funding and valuation

Crusoe raised $128 million in a 2021 Series B led by Valor Equity Partners and $350 million in a 2022 Series C led by G2 Venture Partners at a $1.75 billion valuation, followed by $600 million at a $2.8 billion valuation in December 2024 (Source: tsginvest.com).

In October 2025 the company announced the initial closing of a $1.375 billion Series E at a valuation above $10 billion, co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital. Participants included NVIDIA, Founders Fund, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Franklin Templeton, T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global Management, Salesforce Ventures, Supermicro, Altimeter Capital, Atreides Management, Radical Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Spark Capital, StepStone Group, Lowercarbon Capital, 137 Ventures, 1789 Capital, Activate Capital, BAM Elevate, DPR Construction, Galvanize, Long Journey Ventures, M37 Management, MCJ, Ora Global, Upper90, Winklevoss Capital, Zigg Capital, and Saquon Barkley, with funds managed by Blue Owl expected in a later closing (Source: crusoe.ai).

Bloomberg News reported on July 2, 2026 that Crusoe was in talks to raise about $3 billion in a round that investors familiar with the discussions expected to value the company at roughly $30 billion including the new capital — approximately three times the Series E mark set less than a year earlier. No round had been announced at that point, and no final valuation had been set (Source: finance.yahoo.com). Axios had reported in March 2026 that the company was pursuing a pre-IPO round targeting a $30 billion to $40 billion valuation; the appointment of Michael Gordon, formerly chief operating and financial officer of MongoDB, as chief operating and financial officer has been read as consistent with IPO preparation (Source: tsginvest.com).

Bloomberg reported on September 3, 2026, citing people familiar with the situation, that the round had been finalized with more than $3 billion raised at about $30 billion, co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners with Mubadala Capital participating (Source: bloomberg.com). Crusoe's own announcement on September 17, 2026 described the initial closing of an anticipated $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion post-money valuation, with Mubadala Capital as a third co-lead. The oversubscribed round drew backing from new and existing investors including Founders Fund, GIC, NVIDIA, the Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures and TPG, with further participants including 1789 Capital, Altimeter, ARK Invest, Avenir, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Salesforce Ventures, SemiAnalysis Capital, T. Rowe Price-advised accounts and Tiger Global. At the announcement the company reported more than $140 billion in total contracted value across its platform, more than 6 GW of gross contracted capacity of which 1 GW was delivered and operational, bookings for Crusoe Cloud up more than 20-fold year over year to date, more than $100 million in contracted annual recurring revenue for its managed inference product launched late the previous year, and a workforce of more than 1,800 across five countries. It named Cognition, Figure and Perplexity among Crusoe Cloud customers, and stated that OpenAI trained Astra, which it called OpenAI's "first artificial general intelligence," at the Abilene campus (Source: crusoe.ai).

Sacra estimated Crusoe revenue of approximately $276 million in 2024, up 82% year over year, with the company projecting $998 million for 2025, and put expected Abilene-campus revenue at $250 million for 2026 against earlier projections of $10 million, with more than 700 megawatts live by December 2026 (Source: sacra.com).

Acquisitions

Crusoe acquired Atero, an Israeli GPU orchestration startup, for a reported $150 million, adding GPU management and memory-optimization capability to its managed AI services and establishing a research and development hub in Tel Aviv (Sources: crusoe.ai; tsginvest.com).

Business and competition

Crusoe competes with CoreWeave, Lambda Labs, and Applied Digital for AI cloud workloads. Demand in the neocloud segment is driven by frontier model training and large-scale AI infrastructure buildouts such as the Stargate Project, which the AI industry's growing compute requirements have made a focus of scrutiny over carbon footprint and strain on electrical grids.

The company relies on Nvidia GPU supply (Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure). Trade commentary identifies the principal execution risks as construction delay and cost overrun across a multi-gigawatt development pipeline, and GPU supply-chain constraints (Source: tsginvest.com).

Relationships

Sources

  • (Source: crusoe.ai) — Crusoe newsroom: Series E size, co-leads, full investor list, Atero acquisition, Childress campus
  • (Source: crusoe.ai) — Crusoe newsroom: Abilene expansion to 1.2 GW, first-phase specifications
  • (Source: datacenterdynamics.com) — DCD: $11.6bn phase-two financing within a $15bn joint venture
  • (Source: sacra.com) — Sacra: Stargate ownership and lease structure; revenue estimates
  • (Source: finance.yahoo.com) — Verdict, reporting Bloomberg News: July 2026 $3bn / ~$30bn talks
  • (Source: tsginvest.com) — private-markets profile: earlier round history, contracted capacity and pipeline, Atero price, executive appointment