Crusoe raises $600M as firm shifts from remote bitcoin miners to big data centers

A rendering of the info heart that Denver-based Crusoe is constructing in Abilene, Texas. (Courtesy Crusoe)

Crusoe is powering up.

The Denver-based information heart operator lately closed a $600 million capital elevate, led by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, one of many traders in OpenAI. 

The corporate will use the money to construct out a fleet of knowledge facilities, co-founder and President Cully Cavness informed BusinessDen. 

“The ambition is to construct gigawatts of AI infrastructure over time,” he mentioned. 

Crusoe builds and provides each facet of a plant, from vitality to servers. Most pre-existing information facilities don’t have the capability to deal with synthetic intelligence computing, inflicting record low vacancy. Cavness mentioned the corporate’s mannequin helps fight this downside through the use of largely renewable vitality in locations the place there’s extra.

In mid-October, the corporate announced a $3.4 billion deal to construct a knowledge heart in Abilene, Texas. Cavness declined to touch upon the tenant, however The Info reported that Oracle will lease the constructing and, in flip, sublease it to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

The Texas heart will use wind generators to run its servers, which Cavness mentioned will assist scale back wasted energy in a breezy a part of the grid. Cavness mentioned it’s going to produce 1.2 gigawatts.

Cavness mentioned the operator moved in final month and that the middle is anticipated to open within the first half of 2025 after development began in June, which he described as a report time for ground-up information heart buildout. Will probably be one of many largest computing services on this planet, he mentioned.

“We begin with vitality first, discovering areas the place we are able to deliver massive quantities of low-cost energy to bear shortly, then construct out the info heart and deploy servers,” he mentioned.

The corporate additionally operates one other information heart in Iceland, which is run by geothermal and hydropower, and has one other 15 gigawatts deliberate within the brief time period — sufficient to energy 1.5 billion mild bulbs. 

Cavness mentioned Crusoe is exploring extra spots to construct in Texas, in addition to the northeast, Colorado and Canada.

The elevate, which brings the corporate’s complete to round $1.5 billion, additionally accompanied the general public launch of Crusoe Cloud, the enterprise’ service for operating synthetic intelligence workloads. To entry its servers, Crusoe fees a computing value per hour, which is about relying on the size of time and capability of energy wanted. 

The Cloud servers have been obtainable since 2022, however these have been constructed on a case-by-case foundation, Cavness mentioned.

“Traditionally you’ve needed to be a giant firm with some huge cash to get into that market,” he mentioned.

Crusoe was based in 2018 by Denverites Cavness and Chase Lochmiller, who went to Kent Denver College in Cherry Hills Village collectively. Cavness had a background in vitality earlier than, and Lochmiller labored in tech. The 2 mixed to initially run a crypto mining operation, which captured extra pure fuel from oil fields to energy services. 

Cully Cavness, left, and Chase Lochmiller

However when ChatGPT was publicly launched in 2022, Cavness mentioned the corporate switched gears to capitalize on a coming AI growth.

“We’ve actually targeted Crusoe round AI-vertical integration, however there’s nonetheless a significant portion of money movement coming from our bitcoin mining enterprise,” he mentioned. “It’s simply been inside the final yr we crossed into nearly all of income coming from AI.”

Crusoe has over 550 staff Cavness mentioned, with 200 in Colorado. One other 120 work in San Francisco, the place Lochmiller now lives, and the remainder are all through websites internationally.

The enterprise’ important manufacturing website is in Arvada, the previous Easter-Owens Electrical Co. plant that Crusoe bought in 2022. Cavness mentioned the corporate plans so as to add round 50 extra to its employees of 110. It will allow Crusoe to fabricate 24/7, up from the Monday-through-Thursday schedule it presently operates.

Cavness mentioned Crusoe is cash-flow optimistic and that its buyer base grew seven occasions within the final 12 months.

Crusoe nonetheless runs greater than 200 bitcoin mining facilities in seven states between North Dakota and New Mexico, making it the most important off-grid bitcoin mining operation within the nation, Cavness mentioned. These services seize 30 million cubic ft of flared fuel per day, the equal of taking about 200,000 vehicles off the highway.