Crusoe Raises $600M in Series D Funding, Launches AI-Focused Cloud Platform

AI Infrastructure

The company also said that its Crusoe Cloud platform, with resources and managed services tailored for AI and machine learning workloads, is now generally available. Crusoe, provider of vertically integrated infrastructure for cloud-based AI, has raised $600 million in a Series D funding round that boosts the company's valuation to $2.8 billion. In addition to the new funding, Crusoe on Thursday announced the general availability of Crusoe Cloud, a high-performance platform the company says is tailored for AI and machine learning workloads. The San Francisco-based company said that starting today developers and data scientists can access the cloud platform's resources, managed services and "enterprise-grade support" for AI exploration, model training, fine-tuning and scalable inference workloads. [Related: AI Companies With A Winning Hand: The 2024 CRN AI 100] As businesses and organizations ramp up their development of AI, GenAI and machine learning software and put those systems into production, demand is spiking for high-performance, high-capacity compute and data storage systems - either on-premises or from cloud service providers. Crusoe describes its mission as providing "a reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally aligned solution for AI infrastructure by harnessing large-scale clean energy, building AI-optimized data centers, and empowering builders with a feature-rich development platform," according to a statement announcing the new funding and the Crusoe Cloud general availability. "We believe a new approach is needed to power the AI revolution," said Chase Lochmiller, Crusoe CEO and co-founder, in the statement. "To reduce complexity, accelerate time-to-value, and support the most demanding AI solutions, customers need a vertically integrated approach. We are able to innovate faster and bring new, state-of-the-art capacity online in a fraction of the time compared to legacy cloud providers while delivering unmatched results for customers, making the promises of AI a reality." Crusoe that with the new funding it will "invest in expansion and growth across the value chain," including its data centers and Crusoe Cloud. The company also puts an emphasis on utilizing "clean, abundant and low-cost energy" to power its computing resources. The company said it has over 15 gigawatts in development, including building a data center in Abilene, Texas, with planned capacity of 1.2 gigawatts. That project, announced in October, is part of a $3.4 billion joint venture with Blue Owl Capital, an alternative asset manager, and Primary Digital Infrastructure, an advisory and investor firm focused on the data center industry. Crusoe said its customer count has grown seven-fold in the past 12 months and the company now operates in nine states and three countries. The Series D investment round was led by Founders Fund with participation from a number of new and existing investors including Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures, Mubadala, Nvidia, Ribbit Capital and Valor Equity Partners. "Crusoe is reimagining AI infrastructure from the ground up to meet and exceed organizations' demands, powering the next wave of innovation in a sustainable way," said Sean Liu, Partner at Founders Fund, in a statement. "By innovating at every layer of the stack, Crusoe delivers unmatched price-performance, speed-to-market, and a platform customers can rely on for years to come."

Crusoe Closes $600M in Series D Round at $2.8 Billion Valuation to Power AI

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crusoe, the industry's first vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, today announced it has closed a $600 million Series D funding round. The investment was led by Founders Fund, with participation from new and existing investors, including Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures, Mubadala, NVIDIA, Ribbit Capital, and Valor Equity Partners. Through its innovative approach, Crusoe has established itself as a leader in the AI industrial revolution. "The biggest risk with AI is that we don't go big enough. Crusoe is here to liberate us from the island of limited ambition," said Peter Thiel, Partner at Founders Fund. Crusoe provides a reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally aligned solution for AI infrastructure by harnessing large-scale clean energy, building AI-optimized data centers, and empowering builders with a feature-rich development platform. "We believe a new approach is needed to power the AI revolution," said Chase Lochmiller, CEO and co-founder of Crusoe. "To reduce complexity, accelerate time-to-value, and support the most demanding AI solutions, customers need a vertically integrated approach. We are able to innovate faster and bring new, state-of-the-art capacity online in a fraction of the time compared to legacy cloud providers while delivering unmatched results for customers, making the promises of AI a reality." In addition to funding, Crusoe announced the general availability of Crusoe Cloud, the high-performance cloud platform tailored for AI and machine learning (ML) workloads. Starting today, developers and data scientists can access Crusoe Cloud's cutting-edge resources, managed services, and enterprise-grade support for AI exploration, model training, fine-tuning, and scalable inference workloads. Today's announcements advance Crusoe's mission to align the future of computing with the future of the climate. As the demand for AI grows, so does the demand for the infrastructure and resources to support it. With the latest fundraise, Crusoe will invest in expansion and growth across the value chain, including its data centers and Crusoe Cloud. Crusoe focuses on utilizing clean, abundant, and low-cost energy to power its computing resources and has over 15 gigawatts in development. Crusoe recently announced a new data center in Abilene, Texas with over 1.2 gigawatts planned, which will make it one of the largest high-performance computing clusters in the world. With more data centers planned, the company will expand into new markets and support job creation and resources for local communities. "Crusoe is reimagining AI infrastructure from the ground up to meet and exceed organizations' demands, powering the next wave of innovation in a sustainable way," said Sean Liu, Partner at Founders Fund. "By innovating at every layer of the stack, Crusoe delivers unmatched price-performance, speed-to-market, and a platform customers can rely on for years to come. We invest in smart people solving difficult problems and we're excited to be a part of the journey." Crusoe has seen massive growth and global footprint expansion of its AI infrastructure over the past year. Growth metrics include: Customer Growth: Customer count grew by over 7x in the past 12 months.Strengthened Partnerships and Engagements: New and expanded collaborations with VAST Data, Rescale, SES AI, NVIDIA, Deloitte, and other key industry leaders.Footprint Expansion: Crusoe now operates in nine states and three countries, including Iceland, serving customers around the world.Economic Impact: New data center launched in Abilene, Texas, is projected to add $1 billion to the local economy over the next 20 years and create more than 800 local jobs.Strategic Leadership Appointments: Company welcomed Bill Stein, Peter Gross, and Matt Field to its board of advisors and appointed Nadav Eiron as Senior Vice President of Cloud Engineering to scale its Cloud platform. "With Crusoe, we scaled our capacity five times within hours to serve all of our Oasis users across Europe. This enabled Oasis to seamlessly scale to over two million users in just four days," said Dean Leitersdorf, CEO and co-founder of Decart. "Codeium helps over 700,000 developers and hundreds of enterprises accelerate writing and deploying code into production with an AI-based code assistant developed with compute support Crusoe Cloud. Codeium's NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs on Crusoe have been incredibly reliable with a cluster uptime of 99.98%," said Varun Mohan, CEO and co-founder of Codeium. To learn more about Crusoe, please visit: https://crusoe.ai/ About Crusoe Crusoe is on a mission to align the future of computing with the future of the climate. Crusoe provides a reliable, scalable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly solution for AI infrastructure by harnessing large-scale clean energy, building AI-optimized data centers, and empowering builders to reach their AI potential. Crusoe is empowering the AI revolution. Media Contact Stephanie Schlegel Offleash for Crusoe Crusoe@offleashpr.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

AI-focused data center startup Crusoe raises $600M at $2.8B valuation - SiliconANGLE

AI-focused data center startup Crusoe raises $600M at $2.8B valuation Crusoe Energy Systems LLC, a startup building data centers for artificial intelligence workloads, today announced it raised $600 million in a Series D funding round to accelerate its deployment of physical infrastructure. The funding round, which values the company at $2.8 billion, was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund with participation from Nvidia Corp., Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures, Mubadala, Ribbit Capital and Valor Equity Partners. Founded in 2018, Crusoe first launched a service to provide small, containerized data centers to oil wells in the U.S. by harnessing natural gas that would otherwise be burned and wasted. Initially, the company used the energy for bitcoin mining, an energy-intensive method for earning cryptocurrency. Later the company pivoted its resources towards AI and high-performance computing. The company says it can offer cost-effective generative AI compute at scale using clean energy allowing it to deliver environmentally aligned AI infrastructure with its data centers. In October, Crusoe launched a $3.4 billion joint venture with Blue Owl Capital Inc. and Primary Digital to construct a two-building data center facility in Abilene, Texas. Together buildings will comprise about 998,000 square feet and are planned to support over 1.2 gigawatts of energy. One gigawatt of power could provide enough energy for around 700,000 homes. The company estimates the facility will have the capacity to house up to 100,000 graphical processing units, making it one of the biggest purpose-built AI data centers in the world. "We've designed this data center to enable the largest clusters of GPUs in the world that will drive breakthroughs in AI," said Crusoe co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chase Lochmiller. In addition to the fundraise, Crusoe also announced the general availability of Crusoe Cloud, a high-performance cloud platform designed for AI and machine learning workloads. Using the service, developers, data scientists and AI engineers can experiment with AI, train and deploy models. In the past year, the company said it expanded collaborations with leading technology companies including Nvidia, VAST Data Inc., Deloitte and Rescale Inc. Crusoe now operates in nine U.S. states and three countries, including Iceland, serving customers globally. With the new funding, the company said it plans to build more data centers that will use abundant, low-cost clean energy and has over 15 gigawatts in development.

Crusoe secures $600 million in Series D round led by Founders Fund

Dec 12 (Reuters) - Crusoe has raised $600 million in a Series D funding round led by venture capital firm Founders Fund, the artificial intelligence infrastructure provider said on Thursday. The new fundraise valued Crusoe at $2.8 billion. Other investors in the round included Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures, the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, Ribbit Capital and Valor Equity Partners, the company said. The latest fundraising will be used to invest in the expansion and growth of data centers and the Crusoe cloud, the startup said. The rapid evolution of cloud computing and data centers, driven by generative AI, underscores the growing importance of AI infrastructure providers such as Crusoe, Lambda and CoreWeave. These companies integrate graphics processing units and other tools into their infrastructure to assist enterprises in managing their AI workloads effectively. Crusoe, which was launched in 2018 as a cryptocurrency business, pivoted to building computing and AI infrastructure using large-scale clean energy. Over the past year, Crusoe has expanded its collaboration with chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, consulting firm Deloitte [RIC:RIC:DLTE.UL] and computing infrastructure provider VAST Data, among others. The company has introduced Crusoe Cloud, a new cloud platform aimed at helping developers and data scientists manage AI and machine learning workloads efficiently. Investors are rushing to support startups capitalizing on the generative AI boom. Last week, AI firm Nebius Group said it was raising $700 million in a private placement from investors, including Nvidia, to build tools for AI developers. Reporting by Priyanka.G in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Technology

OpenAI Data Center Provider Crusoe Raises $600 Million

Crusoe, which develops data centers for artificial intelligence developers such as OpenAI, raised $600 million in a deal led by Founders Fund, confirming The Information's prior reporting about the fund's involvement. Nvidia, Fidelity, Long Journey Ventures and Valor Equity also participated in the round, which valued the company at $2.8 billion, the company said on Thursday. Nvidia wasn't