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
| Date | Value | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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
| Date | Figure | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-15 | 1.0 GW | Childress, Texas campus announced jointly with Lancium | (Source: crusoe.ai) |
| 2026-06 | ~4.9 GW contracted; >40 GW pipeline | Meta, Microsoft and Google reported among capacity purchasers | (Source: tsginvest.com) |
| 2025-H1 | 200+ MW energized | First 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).
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 has been announced, and no final valuation has 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).
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
- related: CoreWeave — fellow neocloud competing for AI GPU cloud workloads
- related: Stargate Project — neocloud demand driven by large-scale AI infrastructure buildout; Crusoe developed the flagship Abilene site
- related: Data Center Siting / AI Power Politics — alternative siting strategy avoids grid interconnection delays
- depends-on: Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure — relies on Nvidia GPU supply; Nvidia is also a Series E investor
- related: Lancium — joint 1.0 GW Childress, Texas campus announced July 2026
- deployed-by: OpenAI — Abilene compute reaches OpenAI through Oracle under the Stargate structure
- related: NERC 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA) — energy demand forecasts relevant to AI infrastructure sustainability
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