Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers
TechCrunch Kirsten Korosec
Crusoe dropped its $1.25B plan to buy Boom turbines for AI data centers. That kills Boom’s launch customer and slows a big bet on new power gear.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Kirsten Korosec — read the original for the full story.
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Crusoe and Boom Supersonic are no longer moving ahead with the turbine partnership that was meant to put 29 of Boom’s stationary power plants into Crusoe’s AI data centers. The deal was supposed to be worth $1.25 billion, with the first Superpower deliveries starting in 2027. Now it’s off.
The split matters because Crusoe was supposed to be Boom’s first customer for the new business. Boom launched that line last year, aiming to sell a natural gas-fired stationary version of the engine it is building for its Overture supersonic passenger jet. The company says the Superpower turbine uses about 80% of the same parts as Symphony, the airborne engine.
Crusoe’s role in the AI boom has grown fast. The Denver startup, founded in 2018 as a bitcoin miner using excess natural gas from oil fields, has turned into one of the biggest builders of AI data centers. Its Abilene, Texas campus supplies computing power to OpenAI, and the company recently raised $3.9 billion.
Boom CEO Blake Scholl said on X that turbines are no longer part of Crusoe’s near-term primary power mix at Abilene and elsewhere, so a launch partnership no longer made sense. He said Boom still has other customers in its pipeline and expects to deliver about 250MW of Superpowers next year to other sites, with a target of 1GW in 2028. Crusoe, for its part, said it is still flexible on energy sources and named wind, solar, batteries and the grid alongside turbines, but that this partnership was not the right fit today.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when startup power fantasies meet actual site needs: the buyer gets picky and the vendor loses its first big stage. Boom still has a pitch, but losing Crusoe takes some shine off the story, because launch customers are supposed to do more than clap politely from the sidelines. In AI infrastructure, the market prefers boring and reliable over elegant and futuristic, which is usually bad news for the powerpoint crowd.
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