The energy-first AI factory company — vertically integrated, clean-powered AI data centers and cloud
HQ: Denver, CO, United States | Founded: 2018 | Employees: ~600 (2026, est.) | Stage: Late Stage VC (Pre-IPO) | Website: https://www.crusoe.ai
Crusoe was founded in 2018 by Chase Lochmiller (CEO) and Cully Cavness (President) in Denver, Colorado, with an unusual origin story: the company built modular data centers powered by stranded natural gas that would otherwise be flared off at oilfields — using that energy to mine bitcoin while reducing methane emissions. That Digital Flare Mitigation® business became a real, profitable operation and gave Crusoe deep expertise in deploying compute infrastructure wherever power is cheap and available.
As AI compute demand exploded, Crusoe pivoted to the same playbook at massive scale: secure power first, then build AI data centers and a GPU cloud (Crusoe Cloud) around it. The company now describes itself as an 'energy-first AI factory' company, developing gigawatt-scale campuses, including a landmark ~$15B AI data center project in Abilene, Texas developed with Blue Owl Capital and Primary Digital with Meta as anchor tenant, plus sites across the U.S. and internationally.
Financially, Crusoe reported $276M in revenue for 2024 (up 82% year over year), driven by GPU cloud operations and customers including Sony and Databricks, with Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI now reported among its anchor customers. The company has raised approximately $3.9 billion — a $350M Series C (2022), a $600M Series D at $2.8B (December 2024, led by Founders Fund with NVIDIA), a $1.375B Series E at $10B+ (October 2025, co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital) — and in September 2026 was reported to be closing a $3B round at roughly a $30B valuation ahead of a potential 2026 IPO.
Crusoe has executed one of the cleanest strategic pivots in infrastructure: from mining bitcoin on flared gas in oilfields to becoming a top-tier AI data center developer whose anchor customers include Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Its 'energy-first' thesis — lock up cheap, clean, or stranded power before building compute — is exactly what the AI buildout needs, and it has the capital ($3.9B raised, a reported $3B pre-IPO round at ~$30B) and projects (the gigawatt-scale Abilene campus) to prove it. The bull case is that power, not chips, is the binding constraint on AI, and Crusoe owns the power-first playbook; the bear case is intense competition from CoreWeave, Lambda, and hyperscalers, heavy debt-financed capex, and the execution risk of building multi-billion-dollar campuses on schedule.
Browse: Home | Blog | About | All Startups A-Z | View full profile on StartupWiki