Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Crusoe
The Denver company founded in 2018 to burn natural gas that oil producers would otherwise flare, using it to power bitcoin-mining containers on the well pad, which turned that habit of going where the power is into an AI-infrastructure business: first a GPU cloud (Crusoe Cloud, from 2022), then the developer of the first Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, built for Oracle and OpenAI (~1.2 GW planned). It sold the bitcoin and flare business to NYDIG in 2025 and raised money at rising valuations: ~$2.8bn (December 2024), ~$10bn+ (October 2025) and ~$30bn (September 2026, reported). By September 2026 it said it had more than 1 GW operating and more than 6 GW of gross contracted capacity (company claim). Its setbacks have been about power and execution: reliability problems and a weather-related outage at Abilene, Oracle and OpenAI dropping a planned expansion there (March 2026), and a paused 1.8 GW Wyoming campus (June 2026).
At a glance
- Founded
- August 2018, Denver, Colorado, by Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness (the idea reportedly took shape on a 2017 climbing trip)
- Headquarters
- Denver (San Francisco offices; manufacturing in Arvada, Colorado, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Ponchatoula, Louisiana; R&D hub in Tel Aviv after the 2025 Atero acquisition)
- Ownership / structure
- Private. Investors include Founders Fund, Valor Equity Partners, Mubadala Capital, Atreides Management, Nvidia, Fidelity, Altimeter, Ribbit, G2 Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures (reported). IPO preparation with banks reported August 2026; no public filing seen by November 2026
- Leadership (2026)
- Chase Lochmiller (co-founder, CEO); Cully Cavness (co-founder, president/COO); Michael Gordon (former MongoDB CFO, joined December 2025 as COO/CFO, reported, verify title); Matt Field (chief real-estate officer); Erwan Menard (product, formerly Google Cloud)
- Products
- Campus development ("AI factories": land, power, buildings, cooling) leased to hyperscalers and labs; Crusoe Cloud (GPU instances, managed Kubernetes, inference services); Crusoe Spark modular data centres; on-site power (gas turbines, batteries); electrical equipment from its own factories
- Scale
- ~1,000 full-time staff (October 2025, reported) plus ~5,000 contractors at Abilene; >1 GW operating and >6 GW gross contracted (September 2026, company claim); ~4.9 GW contracted (June 2026, company). Revenue not disclosed: third-party estimates for 2025 range from ~$0.5bn to ~$1bn (Sacra and others; unverified)
- Valuation
- ~$2.8bn (Series D, December 2024); ~$10bn+ (Series E, October 2025); ~$30bn (round of >$3bn reported closed September 2026)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Digital Flare Mitigation (2018); Crusoe Cloud and the pivot to AI (2022–23); Abilene and Stargate (2024–25); Series D to the ~$30bn round (2024–26); the NYDIG sale (2025); the Wyoming campus pause (2025–26); the Abilene expansion collapse and Microsoft lease (2026); diversification to Meta, Jane Street and Google (2026)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2018
Digital Flare Mitigation Founding
Founding
2022
Crusoe Cloud and the Pivot to AI
Launch / pivot
2024
Abilene and the First Stargate Campus
Compute deal / development (campus built and leased to a single tenant)
2024
Series D to the 30bn Round
Funding round (three rounds in 21 months)
2025
Sale of Bitcoin Mining to NYDIG
Divestiture / restructuring
2025
Wyoming Campus and Its Pause
Development (announced, permitted, then paused)
2026
Abilene Expansion Collapse and Microsoft Lease
Compute deal (expansion lost by one tenant and re-let to another)
2026
Meta Jane Street Google and the IPO Path
Compute deals / IPO preparation