Bitcoin miner Crusoe to build ‘multibillion-dollar’ AI data center in Texas

Bitcoin miner Crusoe Energy announced a new multibillion-dollar deal with energy tech company Lancium to build a data center for artificial intelligence in Texas.

Crusoe Energy, one of the first Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies in the U.S. to use wasted natural gas to power its operations, announced on Thursday morning a “multibillion-dollar” deal with Lancium to build a 200-megawatt data center for artificial intelligence (AI) in Texas.

In the press release, Crusoe said the construction is just the “first phase” of its data center development which will expand to enable AI workloads “at scale across 1.2 GW of power capacity at the Lancium Clean Campus.” Once finished, each data center building will be able to operate “up to 100,000 GPUs on a single integrated network fabric,” significantly boosting the scale for AI training and inference workloads, the Bitcoin miner says.

Crusoe’s co-founder and chief executive Chase Lochmiller says both companies designed the data center to enable the “largest clusters of GPUs in the world” in a bid to speed up breakthroughs in the AI sector.

“Given its leadership in renewable energy and plans for the site, working with Lancium in Abilene presents a unique opportunity to sustainably power the future of AI and we’re thrilled to have the support of the city in this ambitious endeavor,” Lochmiller added. The Lancium data center is projected to be energized in 2025, although the exact timeframe remains unclear.

Founded in 2018 by Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness, Crusoe focuses on utilizing otherwise wasted natural gas to power Bitcoin mining activities. In April 2022, the company closed a $350 million Series C equity round led by G2 Venture Partners, with additional participation from Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Founders Fund, and Winklevoss Capital, among others.