Crusoe raises $3.9B to build massive data centers and small modular “AI factories”

Crusoe 融资 39 亿美元，用于建设大型数据中心和小型模块化“AI 工厂”

Data center developer Crusoe said Thursday it raised $3.9 billion in a Series F round that pushes its valuation to $30.9 billion. The massive round was co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners. Founders Fund, GIC, Nvidia, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Radical Ventures, and TPG also participated, according to Crusoe.

数据中心开发商 Crusoe 周四宣布完成 39 亿美元的 F 轮融资，公司估值达到 309 亿美元。本轮巨额融资由 Atreides Management、Mubadala Capital 和 Valor Equity Partners 共同领投。据 Crusoe 透露，Founders Fund、新加坡政府投资公司（GIC）、英伟达（Nvidia）、卡塔尔投资局（QIA）、Radical Ventures 和 TPG 也参与了投资。

Crusoe also announced three new board members, including Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert, Bill Stein, partner and CIO at Primary Digital Infrastructure, and Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel, who also sits on Tesla’s board. Straubel already has ties to Crusoe; he personally invested in the company in 2021, and Crusoe later became the first customer of Redwood’s energy storage business.

Crusoe 同时宣布了三位新董事会成员，包括 Cloudflare 首席财务官 Thomas Seifert、Primary Digital Infrastructure 合伙人兼首席信息官 Bill Stein，以及 Redwood Materials 创始人兼首席执行官 JB Straubel（他同时也是特斯拉董事会成员）。Straubel 与 Crusoe 早有渊源：他曾在 2021 年以个人身份投资该公司，而 Crusoe 后来成为了 Redwood 储能业务的首位客户。

The eight-year-old company’s fresh capital infusion will help finance existing data center projects, including a large site in Abilene, Texas, used by OpenAI, as well as smaller, modular AI factories that can be transported by truck and connected to large power sources almost anywhere. By manufacturing these modular data centers, called Spark, at its own facilities, Crusoe can deploy compute capacity quickly and without the need for large construction workforces.

这家成立八年的公司将利用这笔新资金支持现有的数据中心项目，包括位于德克萨斯州阿比林（Abilene）供 OpenAI 使用的大型站点，以及可以通过卡车运输并连接到几乎任何地方大型电源的小型模块化“AI 工厂”。通过在其自有设施中制造这些被称为“Spark”的模块化数据中心，Crusoe 能够快速部署计算能力，而无需庞大的施工队伍。

The smaller centers could also help Crusoe sidestep, at least in part, another major obstacle facing data center developers: backlash from local communities protesting massive complexes near their neighborhoods. Crusoe co-founder and CEO, who is pictured above, said in a statement he believes AI will usher in an era of abundance, but to get there will mean “controlling the infrastructure from electrons to tokens, and we’re grateful to have investors who share that conviction.”

这些小型中心还可以帮助 Crusoe 在一定程度上规避数据中心开发商面临的另一个主要障碍：当地社区对邻近大型建筑群的抗议。Crusoe 联合创始人兼首席执行官（上图所示）在一份声明中表示，他相信人工智能将开启一个富足的时代，但要实现这一目标，意味着“必须控制从电子到代币的整个基础设施，我们很感激能拥有与我们持有相同信念的投资者。”

The company makes money by leasing data center space to customers that bring their own GPUs, by renting out its own GPUs, and by selling compute power used to run AI models, known as inference. This three-pronged business model has helped make Crusoe one of the most valuable AI infrastructure companies.

该公司通过三种方式盈利：向自带 GPU 的客户出租数据中心空间、出租其自有的 GPU，以及出售用于运行 AI 模型（即推理）的计算能力。这种三管齐下的商业模式使 Crusoe 成为最有价值的 AI 基础设施公司之一。

Crusoe recently signed a massive $13 billion, five-year cloud contract to supply quantitative trading firm Jane Street with GPUs and AI infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. The company recently met with investment bankers, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to discuss a potential IPO in the near future, Axios reported last month.

据彭博社报道，Crusoe 最近签署了一份价值 130 亿美元、为期五年的云服务合同，为量化交易公司 Jane Street 提供 GPU 和 AI 基础设施。据 Axios 上月报道，该公司近期已与高盛（Goldman Sachs）和摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）等投资银行会面，讨论在不久的将来进行首次公开募股（IPO）的可能性。

The fresh fundraise comes 10 months after Crusoe raised $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation last October. The company was founded in 2018 as a crypto mining operation powered by flared natural gas, but pivoted to AI infrastructure as demand for computing power skyrocketed. Crusoe’s customers include Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle.

此次融资距离去年 10 月 Crusoe 以 100 亿美元估值完成的 13.8 亿美元融资仅过去 10 个月。该公司成立于 2018 年，最初是一家利用天然气火炬发电进行加密货币挖矿的企业，但随着对计算能力需求的激增，公司转型为 AI 基础设施提供商。Crusoe 的客户包括 Meta、微软和甲骨文（Oracle）。