Analysis
Crusoe confirmed Friday that it sold an unfinished data-center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google, which is taking over development and has announced plans to invest $17 billion to build out the campus, according to TechCrunch. Google did not disclose what it paid Crusoe for the unfinished site.
What Crusoe does
Crusoe is an eight-year-old, Denver-based data-center developer founded by CEO Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness, who started the company as a cryptocurrency-mining business powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been flared off, per TechCrunch. It now makes money by leasing data-center space to customers that bring their own GPUs, by renting out its own GPUs, and by selling inference compute. Its Abilene, Texas campus is being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, and Meta is also a customer; Bloomberg has also reported a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal between Crusoe and trading firm Jane Street, per the same TechCrunch report.
Crusoe's funding history
Crusoe has raised capital in large, escalating rounds over the past two years:
“- Latest round (Sept 2026) -- $3.9 billion, valuing Crusoe at $30.9 billion, which TechCrunch notes closed even after the Wyoming project's setbacks.”
- Series D (Dec 2024) -- $600 million led by Founders Fund at a $2.8 billion valuation, with Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures, Mubadala, Nvidia, Ribbit Capital and Valor Equity Partners also participating, per TheIndianPrint.
- Series E (2025) -- roughly $1.4 billion led by Mubadala Capital, alongside Valor Equity Partners and Nvidia, pushing its valuation past $10 billion, per Enterprise Africa.
- Latest round (Sept 2026) -- $3.9 billion, valuing Crusoe at $30.9 billion, which TechCrunch notes closed even after the Wyoming project's setbacks.
Why Google is taking over in Wyoming
Crusoe first announced the Wyoming project last year with Blackstone-backed infrastructure company Tallgrass, planning to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity, according to TechCrunch. The deal to sell the site to Google was first reported by Bloomberg in June. Despite handing the project to Google, Crusoe keeps a foothold with the search giant: it is still developing a separate data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas.
The AI data-center market and competitors
Crusoe's model -- pairing GPU hosting with compute resale -- competes with hyperscaler-run capacity from Google, Microsoft and Amazon, as well as other independent AI-infrastructure developers chasing multibillion-dollar rounds this year. Pulse has tracked Crusoe's rapid ascent through a string of funding rounds that multiplied its valuation more than tenfold in under two years. Google's willingness to commit $17 billion of its own capital to finish a project it didn't build end to end shows how much capacity hyperscalers are now willing to buy or build outright rather than wait on third-party developers to deliver on schedule.
The counterweight
Crusoe's ability to raise $3.9 billion in September despite an undisclosed-size shortfall on a flagship project is itself a caveat: it suggests investors are pricing Crusoe on its remaining pipeline, including the Abilene and Amarillo campuses, rather than on every project closing as planned. The Wyoming sale is a reminder that even well-funded AI-infrastructure developers can run into sites too large or too slow to finish alone.
What to watch next
Whether Google's $17 billion Wyoming build comes with any direct financial relationship back to Crusoe beyond the undisclosed sale price, and whether more of Crusoe's pipeline ends up transferring to hyperscaler balance sheets the way this one did.
