Google Takes Over Crusoe's Troubled Wyoming Data Center Site

Google has taken over Crusoe's unfinished data-center project in southeastern Wyoming, after the AI infrastructure developer confirmed on Friday that it sold the site to the search giant.

Crusoe, an eight-year-old, Denver-based data center developer recently valued at $30.9 billion, had tried and failed to land Google as a customer for the project. Google is now taking over the development after reportedly raising concerns about its cost and construction timeline under Crusoe's management.

Google did not disclose how much it paid Crusoe for the unfinished project, but it announced plans to invest $17 billion to develop the data center campus. The deal came a day after Google announced its first data center in Wyoming, a campus in Laramie County that will be powered in part by a 702-megawatt fuel-cell development with carbon capture.

Crusoe initially announced the project last year with Blackstone-backed infrastructure company Tallgrass, planning to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Crusoe said its work on the site covered choosing the location, winning government approvals and designing a power supply with Tallgrass. The company paused development of the 1.8-gigawatt campus, known as Project Jade, in June.

The sale was first reported by Bloomberg in June, but the Wyoming setback did not stop Crusoe from raising a $3.9 billion funding round in September. The deal highlights how difficult it can be for independent data center developers to deliver massive projects on time and within budget, given the challenges of securing equipment and power.

Despite taking over the Wyoming facility, Google has not walked away from working with Crusoe entirely. Crusoe is developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas. The company is also building a campus in Abilene, Texas, in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, and a separate 900-megawatt campus next door for Microsoft, with its first building expected to come online in mid-2027.

The handover shows how the bottleneck in the AI buildout has moved. The constraint is no longer just chips or servers — it is who can turn a power number into a building that actually comes online, on schedule and on budget.

Sources

• TechCrunch — Crusoe sells troubled Wyoming data center project to Google
• Innopark IT — Google Plans a $17 Billion Data Center in Wyoming as Data Center Backlash Grows