Crusoe, the Denver-based data center developer valued at $30.9 billion, has sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google. Crusoe had initially announced the project last year with Blackstone-backed infrastructure company Tallgrass, planning to scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Google, which Crusoe had tried and failed to land as a customer, is taking over the development after reportedly raising concerns about cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management. Google did not disclose its purchase price but announced plans to invest $17 billion to develop the campus.

The deal illustrates the difficulty independent data center developers face delivering massive projects on time and within budget, with equipment and power challenges compounded by local community opposition. Despite the Wyoming setback, Crusoe continues to work with Google on another data center near Amarillo, Texas, and raised a $3.9 billion round in September. Crusoe leases space to customers that bring their own GPUs, rents out its own GPUs, and sells compute power for running AI models. Its Abilene, Texas campus is being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, and a separate 900-megawatt campus for Microsoft is expected to have its first building online in mid-2027. Jane Street reportedly signed a $13 billion, five-year cloud deal with Crusoe.

Crusoe was founded by Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness as a cryptocurrency-mining business powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off. In September it added three board members, including JB Straubel, the Redwood Materials founder and Tesla board member who invested in Crusoe in 2021; Crusoe later became the first customer of Straubel’s energy-storage business.