Denver-based data center developer Crusoe has confirmed the sale of an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google, marking a notable setback for the eight-year-old company, which was most recently valued at $30.9 billion. The announcement came on a Friday, with Crusoe acknowledging that Google - a company it had previously attempted and failed to sign on as a customer for the project - would be assuming control of the development.

Google's decision to take over the project reportedly followed concerns the tech giant raised regarding the cost of construction and the timeline under which Crusoe had been managing it. Rather than walking away from the site altogether, Google moved to acquire it and redirect the development under its own oversight.

From Blackstone-Backed Partnership to Google Takeover

Crusoe had originally unveiled the Wyoming project the previous year in partnership with Tallgrass, an infrastructure company backed by Blackstone. The initial vision was ambitious - the facility was intended to eventually reach a power capacity of 10 gigawatts, placing it among the most significant data center developments in the United States. However, those plans have now shifted significantly with the change in ownership.

Google has not disclosed the acquisition price it paid to take the project off Crusoe's hands. What it has disclosed is its intention to invest $17 billion to develop the Wyoming site into a full-scale data center campus. The scale of that investment signals Google's long-term commitment to the location, even as the circumstances under which it gained control of the project raise questions about the difficulties facing independent data center developers.

A Broader Industry Challenge

The situation in Wyoming illustrates a recurring challenge in the data center industry: delivering large-scale infrastructure projects on schedule and within financial constraints. Developers frequently encounter difficulties securing the necessary equipment and power infrastructure, and increasingly face resistance from local communities opposed to the environmental or logistical impact of massive construction efforts. These pressures can derail even well-funded projects.

Despite the setback in Wyoming, Crusoe and Google have not severed their working relationship entirely. Crusoe is currently developing a separate data center facility for Google near Amarillo, Texas, indicating that the two companies continue to collaborate on other fronts even as Google assumes control of the Wyoming campus.

Financial Momentum Despite Project Difficulties

News of the Wyoming sale had first surfaced in a report by Bloomberg in June, but the project's difficulties did not appear to undermine investor confidence in Crusoe as a company. In September, Crusoe successfully closed a $3.9 billion funding round, demonstrating that the broader investment community remains bullish on the company's prospects despite the Wyoming complications.

Crusoe's business model spans several revenue streams. The company leases data center space to clients who supply their own graphics processing units, rents out its own GPU hardware to customers, and sells compute capacity used to power artificial intelligence inference workloads - the process by which trained AI models generate responses and outputs.

High-Profile Clients and Expanding Footprint

Crusoe's largest infrastructure projects are tied to some of the most prominent names in the technology and AI sectors. The company is constructing a campus in Abilene, Texas, in phases, serving both Oracle and OpenAI. Adjacent to that development, Crusoe is also building a separate 900-megawatt campus for Microsoft, with the first building at that site expected to become operational around mid-2027.

Meta is also listed among Crusoe's customers. Bloomberg has additionally reported that Jane Street, the prominent quantitative trading firm, entered into a five-year cloud computing agreement with Crusoe valued at $13 billion - a deal that, if accurate, would represent one of the largest cloud contracts in recent memory for an independent infrastructure provider.

Origins and Leadership

Crusoe was co-founded by Chase Lochmiller, who serves as the company's chief executive officer, and Cully Cavness. The company's origins were quite different from its current identity as a major AI infrastructure provider. It began as a cryptocurrency mining operation that used natural gas which would otherwise have been flared - burned off at oil and gas sites - as its energy source, positioning itself as a more environmentally conscious alternative to conventional mining setups.

In September, concurrent with the closing of its $3.9 billion funding round, Crusoe expanded its board of directors with the addition of three new members. Among them was JB Straubel, the founder of battery recycling company Redwood Materials and a board member of Tesla. Straubel had previously invested in Crusoe back in 2021. In a notable turn, Crusoe later became the first customer of Straubel's energy storage business, adding another layer to the relationship between the two entrepreneurs.