Crusoe raises $3.9B to build massive data centers and small modular 'AI factories'

Primary Journalistic Dispatch & Direct Reporting

Disrupt 2026: OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, and more take over 6 industry stages. 25% off tickets now

Data center developer Crusoe said Thursday it raised $3.9 billion in a Series F round that pushes its valuation to $30.9 billion. The massive round was co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners. Founders Fund, GIC, Nvidia, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Radical Ventures, and TPG also participated, according to Crusoe.

Crusoe also announced three new board members , including Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert; Bill Stein, partner and CIO at Primary Digital Infrastructure; and Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel, who also sits on Tesla's board. Straubel already has ties to Crusoe; he personally invested in the company in 2021, and Crusoe later became the first customer of Redwood's energy storage business.

In-Depth Developments & Factual Context

The eight-year-old company's fresh capital infusion will help finance existing data center projects, including a large site in Abilene, Texas, used by OpenAI, as well as smaller, modular AI factories that can be transported by truck and connected to large power sources almost anywhere.

By manufacturing these modular data centers, called Spark, at its own facilities, Crusoe can deploy compute capacity quickly and without the need for large construction workforces. The smaller centers could also help Crusoe sidestep, at least in part, another major obstacle facing data center developers: backlash from local communities protesting massive complexes near their neighborhoods.

Crusoe co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller, who is pictured above, said in a statement he believes AI will usher in an era of abundance, but to get there will mean "controlling the infrastructure from electrons to tokens, and we're grateful to have investors who share that conviction."

Industry Impact & Strategic Analysis

The company makes money by leasing data center space to customers that bring their own GPUs, by renting out its own GPUs, and by selling compute power used to run AI models, known as inference.

This three-pronged business model has helped make Crusoe one of the most valuable AI infrastructure companies. Crusoe recently signed a massive $13 billion , five-year cloud contract to supply quantitative trading firm Jane Street with GPUs and AI infrastructure, Bloomberg reported.

The company recently met with investment bankers, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to discuss a potential IPO in the near future, Axios reported last month.

Forward Outlook & Market Perspective

The fresh fundraise comes 10 months after Crusoe raised $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation last October.

The company was founded in 2018 as a crypto mining operation powered by flared natural gas, but pivoted to AI infrastructure as demand for computing power skyrocketed. Crusoe's customers include Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn't affect our editorial independence.

Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her career, Marina was a financial analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation.

You can contact or verify outreach from Marina by emailing marina.temkin@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 347-683-3909 on Signal.

Last day to book an exhibit table is September 18. Don't miss out on high-impact leads, investor access, and a brand spotlight in Disrupt's Expo Hall.

Reporting synthesized and verified under Nexvoro.tech editorial guidelines. Full primary records referenced via TechCrunch.