Crusoe, a Denver-based startup that began as a bitcoin miner using excess natural-gas from oil fields, has become a major builder of AI data centers. After a recent $3.9 billion financing round, the company announced it will no longer pursue a $1.25 billion purchase of stationary power turbines from fellow Denver firm Boom Supersonic.
Boom Supersonic, known for developing the Overture supersonic passenger jet, launched a separate venture last year to market a natural-gas-fired stationary power plant derived from the jet’s engine. The resulting Superpower turbine shares roughly 80 percent of its components with the airborne Symphony engine, allowing the company to repurpose aerospace technology for grid-scale electricity generation.
Under the original agreement, Crusoe would have bought 29 Superpower units, each rated at 42 megawatts, for a total outlay of $1.25 billion. Deliveries were slated to start in 2027, positioning the turbines as a primary power source for the company’s expanding AI-compute campuses. The partnership unraveled, according to Boom CEO Blake Scholl, who confirmed the cancellation in a recent X post.
In his X message, Scholl thanked Crusoe’s founders for their support and noted that Boom will still ship about 250 megawatts of Superpower turbines to other sites next year, with a longer-term goal of reaching one gigawatt of capacity by 2028. He added that the firm continues to pursue additional customers and remains open to future collaboration should turbines become a core element of Crusoe’s energy mix.
Crusoe’s chief operating officer, Andrew Schmitt, said the company builds “AI factories from the power up” and selects energy solutions that fit each location, ranging from wind and solar to batteries, the grid and, where appropriate, on-site turbines. The firm’s first 1.2-gigawatt Abilene campus, built for Oracle and OpenAI, relies on grid electricity with a gas turbine reserved for backup, while a 900-megawatt Microsoft-focused campus will run on dedicated on-site turbines.
The loss of its flagship customer represents a setback for Boom, which secured $300 million in financing last year to commercialize the Superpower line. The company originally intended to channel profits from the stationary-power venture into further development of the Overture jet. Blake Scholl was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.