Crusoe Raises $3.9 Billion for Data Centers Delivered by Truck; First Truck Immediately Stuck Behind Cybercab
The company's modular "Spark" facilities can be deployed anywhere with spare electrical capacity, which the truck was still looking for at press time.
SAN FRANCISCO — Crusoe announced a $3.9 billion funding round Wednesday at a $31 billion valuation to build factory-made "Spark" data centers that can be trucked to any location with available electrical capacity, and confirmed that the first such truck has been stationary on a road outside Austin for six hours behind an autonomous Tesla Cybercab that is "thinking."
"Spark lets us bring compute to the power instead of waiting for power to come to the compute," said Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller. "The unit is ready. The power is ready. The truck is ready. The truck is just behind a car with no steering wheel that has been evaluating a four-way stop since lunch."
The Spark unit, roughly the size of a shipping container, contains 320 GPUs, liquid cooling, and enough networking to operate as a standalone AI training facility. Crusoe says a unit can go from factory to first token in under 72 hours, "assuming normal traffic conditions and no vehicles achieving self-awareness."
The company's model targets a gap in the market: AI developers want compute now, while grid interconnection queues for new data centers now stretch to seven years. "Somewhere out there is a decommissioned aluminum smelter with 90 megawatts and no plans," said an investor in the round. "We are going to find it, and we are going to park next to it."
The truck driver, reached by phone, said the Cybercab ahead of him had activated its hazard lights twice, inched forward once, and at one point displayed a message on its rear screen reading "Almost there!" He said he had considered going around it but was "not confident it would let me."
At press time, Crusoe had announced a second Spark unit and a second truck, which was stuck behind the first truck.