Google has bought Crusoe’s unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming, taking direct control of a site it had earlier declined to sign on to as a customer. Crusoe, the Denver-based AI infrastructure developer, confirmed the sale on Friday, a day after Google announced a $17 billion investment to build its first data center campus in the state.Neither company has disclosed what Google paid. Crusoe said the sale wraps up its pre-development role on the project, which covered site selection, government approvals and the campus power strategy. Google will now build the facility with Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power and Related Digital.
Google takes over Wyoming AI data center after cost and timeline concerns
Crusoe first announced the Wyoming campus last year with Tallgrass, the Blackstone-backed energy infrastructure firm. The plan was to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity.It did not play out that way. Crusoe tried to bring Google in as a customer for the site and failed. Google reportedly raised concerns about the project’s cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management, and reports of a sale first surfaced in June.Crusoe sees it differently. CEO and co-founder Chase Lochmiller said the company’s work on origination, entitlement and de-risking had set the project up for construction and eventual operation. He added that Crusoe now has more than 6 GW of contracted capacity and over 40 GW in its pipeline.The power setup Crusoe drew up with Tallgrass is one of the more unusual parts of the project. It mixes fuel cells, grid power and natural gas turbines, with a longer-term plan to capture carbon through Tallgrass’s regional CO2 sequestration hub.
Crusoe still builds AI data centers for Google, OpenAI and Microsoft in Texas
The Wyoming exit does not end Crusoe’s work with Google. In September, the company confirmed it is developing Google’s campus in Armstrong County, outside Amarillo, Texas. That site connects directly to two neighbouring wind farms of 265.5 MW each, one running and one still under construction. It also uses closed-loop liquid cooling, which keeps water use largely to kitchens and other domestic needs.The Wyoming setback did not slow its fundraising either. Crusoe raised $3.9 billion in September and was recently valued at $30.9 billion, a long way from its start eight years ago as a crypto-mining business run on natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off.Its Abilene, Texas campus is being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, while a separate 900 MW campus next door for Microsoft should bring its first building online in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer, and trading firm Jane Street reportedly signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal with the company.Still, Wyoming shows how hard it has become for independent developers to deliver gigawatt-scale projects on time and on budget, with equipment shortages, power access and local opposition all in play. By buying the site outright, Google has made the cost and the clock its own problem.