Crusoe sells Wyoming data center project to Google

Crusoe, a Denver-based data center developer, sold an unfinished southeastern Wyoming project to Google for an undisclosed price, and Google said it will invest $17 billion to develop the campus. Crusoe first announced the project last year with Blackstone-backed Tallgrass, aiming to grow the site to 10 gigawatts of power capacity.

Crusoe was unable to sign Google as a customer for the site. TechCrunch reported that Google is taking over after raising concerns about the project’s cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management. According to TechCrunch, the deal shows how hard it is for independent data center developers to finish massive projects on time and within budget. The Tech Buzz noted that community opposition has made data center development especially difficult for smaller operators. It cited rejections of multiple data center projects in the 2026 midterms across AI hotspots because of water usage, energy consumption and environmental impact.

Crusoe stated that the Wyoming build required coordinating energy systems, data center engineering, site development and hyperscaler engagement at the same time; it described a power plan combining fuel cells, grid electricity and natural gas turbines. The long-term roadmap also included carbon capture via Tallgrass’s regional CO2 sequestration hub, according to Crusoe. NewsCord cited DiarioBitcoin as saying the design included a hybrid energy plan and could expand from 1.8 GW to 10 GW.

Google did not disclose what it paid for the unfinished project. Quartz en Français said the Wyoming campus would use a 702-megawatt natural gas plant with carbon capture and air cooling instead of water cooling. Quartz en Français reported that the site was planned to be fully operational by the end of 2028. It also said Google held a community meeting in downtown Cheyenne with more than 200 county residents, who raised concerns about how the data center expansion would affect the city.

Google continues to work with Crusoe. The developer is building another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas. Crusoe makes money by renting data center space to customers who supply their own GPUs, leasing its own GPUs and selling compute for AI inference.

Crusoe’s biggest projects serve well-known AI companies. The Abilene, Texas campus is being developed in stages for Oracle and OpenAI. Adjacent to it, Crusoe is building a separate 900-megawatt campus for Microsoft, with the first building due in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer, and Bloomberg reported that Jane Street, a trading firm, agreed to a $13 billion, five-year cloud contract with Crusoe.

CEO Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness founded Crusoe as a cryptocurrency-mining business using natural gas that would otherwise have been flared. After raising $3.9 billion in September, Crusoe expanded its board by three directors, including JB Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials and a Tesla board member who had invested in Crusoe in 2021. NewsCord quoted Lochmiller as saying, “Crusoe’s pre-construction efforts – origination, entitlement, and de-risking – have set up the Wyoming project for construction and eventual operation.”