OpenAI, Oracle, and Microsoft Target Crusoe Energy in $818M Data Center Deal

OpenAI, along with Oracle and Microsoft, is rumored to be renting data centers from Crusoe Energy, a company raising $818M, as per an SEC filing.

 An SEC filing says that Crusoe Energy, a new company that is building data centers that Oracle, Microsoft, and OpenAI are rumored to be renting, is in the process of raising $818 million.

According to the filing, Crusoe has secured $686 million of the $818 million it plans to raise. The filing says that 70 investors have already put money into the tranche. Someone from Crusoe told TechCrunch, “A company at our stage of growth is always talking to investors.”

Earlier this year, the Financial Times said that Crusoe was in talks to get about $500 million in funding. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund would lead the round, and Felicis Ventures would also be involved.

Investors appear to have expressed a desire for a larger stake in the deal, likely resulting in a price tag exceeding the previously reported $3 billion, which was already twice the value of Crusoe.

If Crusoe is able to raise $818 million, the startup will have raised a total of about $1.5 billion in debt and equity. As security for a $200 million loan to buy thousands of AI processors, Crusoe used its data center chips late last year.

Since its start in 2018 as a cryptocurrency business, Crusoe has used natural gas that would have been “flared off” and wasted to power its data centers. As AI became more popular, Crusoe changed its business model, as many others did. It made deals with AI companies to provide high-performance computing and AI infrastructure.

Early in October, Crusoe announced that it would be building a huge data center in Abilene, Texas, with Blue Owl Capital as a partner in a $3.4 billion deal.

Many believe that Oracle will lease the campus, which it will then rent to Microsoft and OpenAI, a company that closely collaborates with Microsoft. Neocloud startups that build cheap, on-demand clouds for AI are in high demand.

CoreWeave and Lambda Labs Secure Over $500M

CoreWeave, a company that builds infrastructure for GPUs, has raised more than $12 million in deals over the last 18 months. Early in April, Lambda Labs secured a special type of financing that could give them up to $500 million.

Voltage Park, a nonprofit backed by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, said in October of last year that it would be investing $500 million in data centers that use GPUs. In March, Salesforce led a $106 million fundraising round for Together AI, a cloud GPU host that also conducts generative AI research.

The buildouts could have a big effect on the environment. Data centers worldwide will use more than double the amount of electricity between 2023 and 2028, predicted IDC. Morgan Stanley says that by 2030, data center tech suppliers will release 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air Subjects