Google is taking over an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming from Crusoe, the Denver-based developer. The handover follows reported concerns about the project’s cost and construction timeline while it was under Crusoe’s management. Google has announced plans to invest $17 billion in developing the campus, though it has not disclosed how much it paid for the project.
A campus changes hands before completion
Crusoe first announced the Wyoming project last year with Tallgrass, an infrastructure company backed by Blackstone. The plan was to expand the site over time to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Google had been a prospective customer, but Crusoe was unable to secure the company for the project before the transfer.
Now Google is taking over development of the unfinished site. Its planned investment signals that the project remains on the table, even as responsibility for building it shifts. The announced amount is for developing the campus; the article does not state the purchase price paid to Crusoe.
The sale was first reported by Bloomberg in June. Crusoe later raised a $3.9 billion round in September, despite the Wyoming project changing hands. The sequence shows that losing this development did not prevent the company from securing substantial funding, although it does not establish how investors viewed the sale.
Why large data center projects are hard to deliver
The Wyoming handover illustrates the execution challenges facing independent data center developers. Projects at this scale depend on securing equipment and power, and delays or cost concerns can make it difficult to keep development on schedule and within budget.
Local opposition can add another complication. A facility may require extensive infrastructure and resources, so development can become more difficult when nearby communities object. The source does not describe specific objections to the Wyoming project, but identifies growing community opposition as a broader challenge for data center construction.
For customers planning computing capacity, a change in developer or owner can matter because the infrastructure must be completed before it can serve its intended use. Google’s takeover puts the project under the prospective customer’s own development effort after concerns arose about the earlier plan.
Crusoe still has major projects and customers
The Wyoming deal does not end the relationship between Google and Crusoe. Crusoe is developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas, leaving the companies with a separate project even after the Wyoming transfer.
Crusoe’s other work includes an Abilene, Texas, campus being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI. The company is also constructing a separate 900-megawatt campus next door for Microsoft, with its first building expected to come online in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer.
Bloomberg reported that trading firm Jane Street signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal with Crusoe. Taken together, these projects show the range of the company’s customer relationships, while the Wyoming handover highlights the risks involved in delivering large developments.
From cryptocurrency mining to AI computing
Crusoe was founded by Chase Lochmiller, now its CEO, and Cully Cavness. They started the business as a cryptocurrency-mining operation powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off. The company has since built several ways to sell computing capacity.
Crusoe leases data center space to customers that bring their own GPUs, rents out GPUs it owns, and sells compute power for running AI models. That last service is known as inference. These offerings place Crusoe across both infrastructure and computing services, connecting its facilities and hardware to customers’ AI workloads.
In September, alongside the $3.9 billion funding round, the company added three board members. They included JB Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials and a Tesla board member who invested in Crusoe in 2021. Crusoe later became the first customer of Straubel’s energy-storage business.
The Wyoming project is one part of Crusoe’s broader expansion, but its transfer to Google makes clear how much execution matters in the data center business. The campus remains slated for development, while Crusoe continues work for Google and other customers elsewhere.