Tech news in 3 minutes

Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers

10 h ago

Crusoe, the Denver-based AI data center startup that recently raised $3.9 billion, has ended its planned partnership with Boom Supersonic to use the company's new line of natural gas-fired stationary power plants, marking a shift in Crusoe's energy strategy for its massive AI data center campuses. Crusoe, founded in 2018 as a bitcoin miner using excess natural gas from oil fields, has become a major AI data center builder, including a 1.2-gigawatt campus in Abilene, Texas, that supplies computing power to OpenAI. Boom Supersonic, developer of the Overture supersonic passenger jet, launched a new business last year to sell its Superpower turbine—sharing 80% of parts with the Symphony jet engine—as stationary power plants. Crusoe had agreed to be the launch customer, spending $1.25 billion on 29 of Boom's 42-megawatt Superpower turbines, with first deliveries planned for 2027. However, Boom CEO Blake Scholl announced on X that the partnership is no longer moving forward, stating that "turbines are no longer part of Crusoe's near term primary power mix at Abilene/etc., so a launch partnership just didn't make sense." Crusoe confirmed to TechCrunch it is no longer doing business with Boom, with spokesperson Andrew Schmitt saying the company stays flexible in choosing energy solutions for each site, including turbines, wind, solar, batteries, and the grid. Crusoe's initial Abilene data center for Oracle and OpenAI is grid-powered, with gas turbines only for backup. A separate 900-megawatt Abilene data center for Microsoft will use on-site gas turbines. Losing its launch customer is a setback for Boom, which raised $300 million last year to commercialize the Superpower business, with profits intended to fund Overture development. Scholl noted Boom will deliver about 250MW of Superpowers to other sites next year, targeting 1GW in 2028.