Crusoe Energy, a startup building data centers reportedly to be leased Oracle, Microsoft, and OpenAI, is in the process of raising $818 million, according to an SEC filing.
The filing indicates that Crusoe has secured $686 million of the $818 million total that it hopes to raise. Seventy investors have contributed to the tranche so far, per the filing.
“A company at our stage of growth is always talking to investors,” a spokesperson for Crusoe told TechCrunch.
The Financial Times reported earlier this year that Crusoe was in talks to raise roughly $500 million in a funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund with participation from Felicis Ventures. It seems investors had an appetite for a larger tranche, which presumably would come at a higher valuation than the rumored $3 billion — which was already double Crusoe’s previous valuation.
Should Crusoe successfully raise $818 million, it would bring the startup’s total raised to approximately $1.5 billion in equity and debt. Late last year, Crusoe secured $200 million in debt using its data center chips as collateral to buy thousands of AI processors.
Crusoe launched in 2018 as a cryptocurrency business, powering its data centers with natural gas that would otherwise be “flared off” and wasted. Like many crypto mining operations, Crusoe pivoted as AI rose to prominence, securing deals with AI companies to provide high-performance computing and AI infrastructure.
In early October, Crusoe announced it would enter into a $3.4 billion joint venture with asset manager Blue Owl Capital to build a massive data center in Abilene, Texas. The campus is expected to be leased to Oracle, which will in turn rent it to Microsoft and its close collaborator, OpenAI.
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