Crusoe Raises $3.9B at $30.9B Valuation for OpenAI Data Centers and Spark AI Factories
Crusoe raises $3.9 billion at a $30.9 billion valuation to fund OpenAI data centers, modular Spark AI factories and preparations for its potential IPO.
Summary
On Thursday, September 17, 2026, Crusoe raised $3.9 billion in a Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation, 10 months after raising $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation last October. Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners co-led, with Founders Fund, GIC, Nvidia, Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures and TPG participating. Three directors joined: Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert; Primary Digital Infrastructure partner and CIO Bill Stein; and Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel, a Tesla director who personally invested in Crusoe in 2021 before it became Redwood’s first energy storage customer.
The eight-year-old company will fund existing projects, including its Abilene, Texas, data center used by OpenAI, and Spark, truckable modular AI factories manufactured in-house for rapid deployment beside large power sources almost anywhere, without large construction workforces. Spark could partly bypass community opposition to massive neighborhood data centers. Crusoe leases space to customers supplying their own GPUs, rents its GPUs and sells AI inference compute; customers include Meta, Microsoft and Oracle. Jane Street also signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud contract for GPUs and AI infrastructure. Founded in 2018 to mine cryptocurrency using flared natural gas, Crusoe pivoted as AI compute demand surged. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley met with Crusoe last month about a possible near-term IPO, although timing and terms remain undisclosed. Co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller says achieving AI-driven abundance requires controlling infrastructure from electrons through tokens.
Positives
- The $3.9 billion Series F lifts Crusoe’s valuation from $10 billion last October to $30.9 billion.
- Jane Street’s $13 billion, five-year contract provides substantial demand for Crusoe’s GPUs and AI infrastructure.
- Spark modules can be transported by truck and deployed rapidly without large construction workforces.
- Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and OpenAI give Crusoe a customer base spanning major AI and cloud companies.
- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have discussed a potential near-term IPO with Crusoe.
Risks & concerns
- Community opposition to massive complexes near neighborhoods remains a major obstacle for data center developers.
- Spark still must connect to large power sources despite being transportable by truck.
- Large conventional data centers require construction workforces that Spark’s factory-built design is intended to reduce.
- IPO timing and terms remain undisclosed following Crusoe’s meetings with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.