Crusoe drops its $1.25 billion Boom turbine deal

A first customer, then a change of plan

Crusoe, based in Denver, recently raised $3.9 billion. It started in 2018 as a Bitcoin miner using associated natural gas from oil fields and has since become one of the largest builders of AI data centers. Its projects include the Abilene campus that provides computing capacity to OpenAI.

Boom Supersonic, also based in Denver, is developing the Overture supersonic passenger aircraft. Last year, it opened a new business selling stationary gas power plants built around the engine it is developing for the aircraft. The Superpower turbine shares about 80% of its parts with the Symphony aircraft engine.

Crusoe had agreed to buy 29 Superpower turbines, each rated at 42 megawatts, with deliveries due to start in 2027. Boom CEO Blake Scholl said the deal had fallen through.

On Friday, Scholl congratulated Crusoe founders Kally Kavanaugh and Chase Lochmiller on their recent fundraising in a post on X and said the companies would no longer launch the joint project. He said Boom has other potential customers.

Scholl said the turbines would not soon be part of Crusoe’s primary power supply, including at Abilene, so the partnership no longer made sense. Boom plans to deliver about 250 megawatts of Superpower turbines to other sites next year and reach 1 gigawatt in 2028. Scholl thanked Crusoe for helping develop Superpower and said the companies could work together later if the turbines become part of Crusoe’s primary power system.

Crusoe confirmed to TechCrunch that it is no longer working with Boom. Company representative Andrew Schmitt said Crusoe builds data centers with their power supply in mind and is opening campuses across the country using different sources. The company keeps its options open and selects power solutions for each site as needs change, he said: turbines, wind, solar, batteries or grid connections. Schmitt called Boom a good partner but said the collaboration was not right for Crusoe at this time, and wished Boom success.

Different campuses, different power

Crusoe says its 1.2-gigawatt data center in Abilene, built for Oracle and OpenAI, gets its electricity from the grid. A gas power plant with turbines at the site serves only as backup.

A separate 900-megawatt data center Crusoe is building in Abilene for Microsoft will be powered by on-site gas turbines.

The lost first customer looks like a setback for Boom. Last year, the company raised $300 million, mostly to develop its stationary power business. Scholl told TechCrunch that profits from that business were supposed to help fund Overture.

I think the split exposes the gap between a turbine customer and a turbine business: Crusoe can choose power site by site, while Boom needs customers willing to make its new product part of their core supply. What the announcement does not say is whether Boom’s other potential customers will take turbines as primary power or use them in a more limited role. That distinction could determine how much the power business can contribute to the aircraft program.