NEW YORK/SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO (Sept 4): Crusoe, a cloud-computing provider and data centre developer doing business with OpenAI, Microsoft Corp and Meta Platforms Inc, has raised over US$3 billion in a funding round that values the startup at roughly US$30 billion, according to people familiar with the situation. 

Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners co-led the round, which has been finalised, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Mubadala Capital, the alternative asset manager owned by Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, is also participating, the people said.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that Crusoe recently secured a roughly US$13 billion deal to supply AI cloud computing capacity to the quant trading firm Jane Street, which helped attract more interest in Crusoe’s latest fundraising effort, a person familiar said.

Crusoe’s US$30 billion valuation is post-money, meaning it includes the new funding. Pre-money, the company was valued at roughly US$27 billion, the people familiar with the deal said. 

Crusoe and Mubadala Capital declined to comment. Atreides and Valor did not respond to requests for comment.  

Founded in 2018 by chief executive officer Chase Lochmiller and chief strategy officer Cully Cavness, Crusoe was initially focused on capturing excess natural gas from energy fields to power crypto-mining operations. It later shifted into AI infrastructure and is seeing its value soar as the AI boom drives unprecedented, worldwide demand for computing capacity.

While Crusoe is best known for developing big data centre projects, including the flagship site of OpenAI and Oracle Corp’s Stargate project in Texas, the company has also been selling AI cloud computing capacity itself, a business that has exploded to meet demand from large enterprises. In March, Microsoft Corp agreed to lease an expansion of Crusoe’s Stargate project that was originally being developed for Oracle and OpenAI after those two companies backed out of talks to occupy the new site. 

Crusoe’s Jane Street cloud contract, which will provide the trading firm with clusters of advanced AI chips known as GPUs and other infrastructure needed for AI training and inference via Crusoe’s cloud platform, is on a five-year term, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Bloomberg had reported in July that Crusoe was in talks to raise about US$3 billion in a funding round that may triple the company’s valuation.

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