The company that once burned flared natural gas to power crypto mining now operates under the name Crusoe, and it has just closed a Series F round worth $3.9 billion, which pushes its valuation up to $30.9 billion. The round was led by three firms: Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners. Founders Fund, GIC, Nvidia, Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures, and TPG also invested.
The New Board Members
Three directors were added to the board. Thomas Seifert, who serves as CFO of Cloudflare, has joined up alongside Bill Stein, a partner and CIO at Primary Digital Infrastructure. The third addition is JB Straubel, founder and CEO of Redwood Materials — and he is not new to Crusoe. He personally invested in the company way back in 2021, and Crusoe became the first customer of Redwood’s energy storage business.
What the Money Buys
The money will support ongoing work at data centers, with a major facility in Abilene, Texas serving OpenAI among its users. It will also cover portable, modular “AI factories” units that can be loaded onto trucks and attached to large power supplies in almost any location.
The modular centers known as Spark are constructed at Crusoe’s own facilities, which enables the firm to deploy computing power quickly, without having to rely on sizable construction workforces. The smaller-scale centers may likewise assist Crusoe in sidestepping some of the resistance that tends to accompany large complexes located close to residential areas.
Crusoe’s Founder on the Raise
The man who runs Crusoe and founded it is pictured above. He spoke through a statement to say he thinks AI will bring about an age of plenty. To reach that point, he said, means “controlling the infrastructure from electrons to tokens, and we’re grateful to have investors who share that conviction.”.
How Crusoe Makes Money
The company earns revenue three ways:
- Leasing data center space to customers that bring their own GPUs.
- Renting out its own GPUs.
- Selling compute power used to run AI models, known as inference.
The three-part framework has turned Crusoe into one of the most valuable AI infrastructure firms in operation today. Most recently, it secured a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal to provide Jane Street with GPUs and AI infrastructure, according to Bloomberg.
The IPO Path
Last month, Axios reported that Crusoe held talks with investment bankers, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, concerning a potential public offering.
From Crypto Mining to Data Centers
This firm began its existence in 2018 as a crypto mining business that ran on flared natural gas. When demand for computing power surged, it shifted course and became an AI infrastructure provider instead. Among its clients are Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle.
The Modular Bet
Crusoe hopes that portable data centers will allow it to avoid local resistance, while it continues to construct massive facilities such as the one in Abilene. Its clients include Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle.
The $3.9 billion raise provides Crusoe with the funds to sustain both approaches simultaneously.
Source material: “Crusoe raises $3.9B to build massive data centers and small modular “AI factories”,” TechCrunch.
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