Crusoe confirmed Friday that it has sold its unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google, TechCrunch AI reports. Google didn’t disclose the price, but it plans to invest $17 billion to develop the campus. The twist: Crusoe had tried and failed to sign Google as a customer for this same site.
The short version
- The deal: Google is taking over the Wyoming development from Crusoe, a Denver-based developer recently valued at $30.9 billion.
- The reported problem: Google raised concerns about the project’s cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management, according to TechCrunch AI.
- The relationship: It isn’t over. Crusoe is still developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas.
- The takeaway: Having land and a giant power target doesn’t mean much until someone can actually finish the build.
From would-be customer to new owner
Crusoe announced the Wyoming project last year with Tallgrass, a Blackstone-backed infrastructure company. The plan was to eventually scale the site to 10 gigawatts of power capacity.
That’s a huge target. For scale, Crusoe’s separate Microsoft campus in Abilene, Texas, is 900 megawatts, so the Wyoming goal was about 11 times bigger.
Google hasn’t said in this report whether it will keep that 10-gigawatt goal. So don’t read the $17 billion as the price of the full original vision. Right now, it’s only the figure Google has committed to the campus.
Why this matters
What stands out here is who ended up holding the project. Google wouldn’t sign on as Crusoe’s tenant, but it was willing to buy the site and run the development itself.
TechCrunch AI points to a few reasons independent developers struggle on projects this size:
- Securing equipment is hard.
- Securing power is hard.
- Local opposition can slow or complicate development.
The independents pitch speed: build the capacity faster than a hyperscaler (one of the giant cloud companies) could do it alone. But when one of those companies has the cash and doubts the schedule, it can simply take control. That’s my read on this deal, and I expect other developers’ customers are watching it closely.
Investors didn’t flinch
Bloomberg first reported the Wyoming sale in June. Crusoe still raised a $3.9 billion round in September, and it added three board members at the same time. One is JB Straubel, the Redwood Materials founder and Tesla board member who invested in Crusoe in 2021.
The customer list helps explain that confidence:
- Oracle and OpenAI: Crusoe is building the Abilene campus in phases for them.
- Microsoft: The 900-megawatt campus next door should bring its first building online in mid-2027.
- Jane Street: The trading firm signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal, according to Bloomberg. That averages out to $2.6 billion a year.
- Meta: It’s also a customer.
Crusoe has also come a long way from its roots. Chase Lochmiller, now CEO, and Cully Cavness started it as a crypto-mining business powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off. Today it makes money in three ways: leasing space to customers who bring their own GPUs, renting out its own GPUs, and selling inference, the compute used to run AI models.
What to watch next
If you depend on AI compute, or you invest in the companies building it, here’s what I’d track:
- Announced gigawatts vs. delivered gigawatts: A big power number in a press release is a plan. Ask about equipment, power, and local approvals.
- More hyperscaler takeovers: Wyoming may not be a one-off if other independent projects slip.
- Crusoe’s next deadlines: The Amarillo project and Microsoft’s mid-2027 target are the next tests of whether Wyoming was a stumble or a pattern.
More details are available in the original TechCrunch AI report.