Crusoe sells troubled Wyoming data center project to Google

Crusoe confirmed it sold an unfinished southeastern Wyoming data center project to Google after failing to land Google as a customer and after Google reportedly raised concerns about cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management. Google did not disclose the purchase price; it announced plans to invest $17 billion to develop the campus.

Crusoe had announced the project with Blackstone-backed Tallgrass and pitched eventual scale to 10 gigawatts. The sale underlines how hard it is for independent developers to deliver hyperscale AI campuses on time and budget amid equipment, power, and local opposition. Google is not walking away from Crusoe entirely — Crusoe is still building another Google facility near Amarillo, Texas.

Bloomberg first reported the Wyoming deal in June; Crusoe still raised $3.9 billion in September at a recent $30.9 billion valuation.

We’re watching the buildout, not the branding. AI needs power and floorspace; someone has to pour the concrete. When an independent developer valued in the tens of billions hands an unfinished site to the customer that wouldn’t sign under its management, that is the market pricing execution risk in public.

Here’s our read: hyperscalers will keep using specialists like Crusoe where they work — Abilene for Oracle and OpenAI, a 900-megawatt Microsoft campus next door, Meta, a reported Jane Street cloud deal — and they will take the keys when timeline and cost slip. Google’s $17 billion follow-on spend says the Wyoming site still matters; the change of control says Crusoe’s delivery story there did not.

Useful AI still needs these campuses. The downside if troubled projects become normal is community backlash plus stranded capital: locals fight the footprint while investors discover that a $30.9 billion developer valuation does not guarantee a finished megawatt. I’m watching whether more customer takeovers show up as the quiet fix for slipped AI power projects.

Crusoe started as a crypto-mining business using flared natural gas, founded by Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness. In September, alongside the $3.9 billion round, it added board members including JB Straubel of Redwood Materials. Revenue mixes leased space for customer GPUs, rented GPUs, and inference compute.