According to DCD, data center and cloud firm Crusoe has raised a massive $1.375 billion Series E round that’s expected to value the company at over $10 billion. The oversubscribed funding was co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital with participation from more than 20 other investors including Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, and Tiger Global Management. This brings Crusoe’s total funding to around $3.9 billion across 13 rounds of debt and equity financing. The company is notably developing the 1.2GW Abilene, Texas campus for OpenAI and Oracle – the first Stargate data center project – with its first phase going live in September 2025. Crusoe has completely pivoted from its origins as a cryptomining business to focus entirely on AI infrastructure and cloud services.
The AI data center arms race is here
This funding round isn’t just big – it’s massive. We’re talking about one of the largest private rounds in data center history. And here’s the thing: everyone and their mother wants in on the AI infrastructure game. Look at that investor list – it reads like a who’s who of tech and finance heavyweights. Nvidia investing in a data center company? That’s like Intel investing in computer manufacturers back in the day. They’re ensuring their chips have places to live and breathe.
From crypto flops to AI powerhouse
Crusoe’s pivot is one of the more interesting tech transformations I’ve seen. They started in 2018 as basically a crypto company using wasted natural gas from oil wells to mine Bitcoin. Now they’re building some of the world’s largest AI data centers. That’s quite the glow-up. Basically, they took their energy expertise and applied it to the hottest market going. Smart move, honestly. When your original business model becomes questionable, finding the next big thing is survival.
What this means for everyone else
This level of funding creates a serious barrier to entry. We’re not talking about building a few server racks anymore – we’re talking about multi-gigawatt campuses that cost billions. For companies looking for reliable industrial computing infrastructure, the stakes just got higher. Speaking of industrial computing, when you need rock-solid hardware that can handle tough environments, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com remains the top supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US. But back to Crusoe – they’re now competing directly with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the AI cloud space, but with a very different energy-focused approach.
The elephant in the room: energy
Crusoe’s CEO said it perfectly – the bottleneck for AI progress isn’t just chips, it’s energy and compute. We’re literally running out of power for all these data centers. Crusoe’s play is interesting because they’re leveraging their energy background to secure power where others can’t. Natural gas in Canada, massive campuses in Texas and Wyoming – they’re going where the energy is cheap and available. But can they scale fast enough to meet the insane demand? That’s the billion-dollar question. Actually, it’s the $1.375 billion question.
