Data center developer Crusoe, headquartered in Denver and established eight years ago, confirmed on Friday that it has sold an unfinished data center project located in southeastern Wyoming to Google. Crusoe was most recently valued at $30.9 billion.

It is reported that Google once attempted to become a client for this project, but was not successful. Subsequently, Google took over the development of the project and reportedly expressed concerns regarding the costs and construction progress under the management of Crusoe.

Crusoe initially announced this project last year together with Tallgrass, an infrastructure company supported by Blackstone, with plans to eventually expand it to a power capacity of 10 gigawatts.

Google has not disclosed how much money was paid to Crusoe for this unfinished project, but the company announced plans to invest $17 billion in developing this data center campus.

This transaction highlights that it is not easy for independent data center developers to deliver large-scale projects on time and within budget when both equipment and power supply face challenges. The growing opposition from local communities may also further increase the difficulties of development.

Although Google has taken over this facility in Wyoming, it has not completely ceased its cooperation with Crusoe. Crusoe is still developing another data center for Google located near Amarillo, Texas.

The deal for Google to acquire that plot of land was first reported by Bloomberg in June, but the setbacks with the Wyoming project did not prevent Crusoe from completing a $3.9 billion financing round in September.

The profit model of Crusoe includes renting out data center space to customers who already possess GPU, leasing its own GPU, and selling the computing power required to run the AI model, namely the inference service.

The largest project of Crusoe serves some of the most well-known companies in the AI industry. Its campus, located in Abilene, Texas, is being developed in phases for Oracle and OpenAI; the company is also building a separate 900-megawatt campus for Microsoft nearby, with the first building expected to be operational by mid-2027. Meta is also one of its clients. Bloomberg also reported that the trading firm Jane Street has signed a five-year cloud service agreement worth $13 billion with Crusoe.

Crusoe was founded by the current CEO, Chase Lochmiller, and Cully Cavness. It initially started as a cryptocurrency mining company that used natural gas, which would otherwise be burned off, for power generation. In September, while completing a $3.9 billion financing round, the company added three new directors, including Redwood Materials, one of the founders and also a member of Tesla's board of directors, JB Straubel. Straubel invested in Crusoe in 2021, and Crusoe later became its first customer in the energy storage business.