Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers

Crusoe, a Denver-based AI data center startup that recently raised $3.9 billion, has ended plans to use a new line of stationary power plants developed by fellow Denver company Boom Supersonic. Founded in 2018 as a bitcoin miner that ran on excess natural gas from oil fields, Crusoe has since become one of the biggest builders of AI data centers, including a massive campus in Abilene, Texas, that supplies computing power to OpenAI.

Boom Supersonic, which is developing a supersonic passenger jet called Overture, launched a new business last year to sell a version of the engine it’s developing for that jet as natural gas-fired stationary power plants. Its Superpower turbine shares about 80% of the same parts with that airborne engine, called Symphony. Crusoe had signed on to be the first customer for this business, agreeing to spend $1.25 billion on 29 of Boom’s 42-megawatt Superpower turbines.

The first deliveries were supposed to begin in 2027. But that deal has since fallen apart, according to Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl. On Friday, in a post on X, after congratulating…