Google buys Crusoe’s Wyoming data center site

Google has acquired Crusoe’s data center site in southeast Wyoming, Crusoe said on November 6, taking over a project whose site selection, governmental approvals and power strategy were already prepared. The transaction ends Crusoe’s pre-development engagement there. It puts the site in a hyperscaler’s hands, rather than leaving Crusoe to carry it through that phase.

The announcement follows Google’s November 5 commitment to invest $17 billion in its first Wyoming data center, in Laramie County. Google named Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power and Related Digital as partners. That is a long-term investment in the project, not the price paid to Crusoe. Reuters reported that the acquisition’s financial terms were not disclosed; Bloomberg also reported the takeover on November 6.

Crusoe and Tallgrass jointly developed the campus’s power and data center infrastructure. Crusoe describes a hybrid plan combining fuel cells, grid power and natural gas turbines, with a longer-term carbon-capture roadmap connected to Tallgrass’s regional CO2 sequestration hub. Securing a site was only one part of the preparatory work: energy design, data center engineering and approvals had to advance together.

Google’s own announcement adds detail to the power plan. It says the project is contracted with AEP for 702 megawatts of fuel cells made by Bloom Energy, with carbon capture and storage at Tallgrass’s nearby Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub. Google also describes gas generation and an engineering study into fitting Tallgrass’s combined-cycle turbines with carbon capture. Those are planned systems and studies, not evidence that the campus or its capture equipment is already operating. Google says the data center will be air-cooled to reduce local water demands.

The ownership change offers a different example of capacity sourcing from Microsoft winding down AI computing rented from Oracle. Microsoft’s reported decision concerned a rental using older Nvidia chips; Google is acquiring a development site. Neither transaction alone establishes that hyperscalers are abandoning leased infrastructure. Both show why the distinction between owning a campus, renting a facility and buying cloud computing matters, as our neocloud explainer sets out.

Crusoe is not leaving Google’s infrastructure supply chain altogether. It says it remains the developer of Google’s campus under construction in Armstrong County, Texas, outside Amarillo. Chief executive Chase Lochmiller also said Crusoe has more than 6 gigawatts contracted and over 40 gigawatts in its pipeline. Those are company-wide figures, not the Wyoming campus’s size; a pipeline is not operating capacity, and the two figures should not be added into a single total.

The immediate change is who controls this Wyoming site after its preparatory work. The disclosed $17 billion commitment supplies the project’s investment context, but neither company’s announcement establishes the acquisition price or a date when the campus will begin delivering computing capacity.