> Data center upstart Crusoe is being pushed aside at an artificial intelligence campus it was developing in Wyoming after failing to lock in customers including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to people familiar with the situation.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-06/google-ta...
Problems with Crusoe were already brewing back in June:
> The developer [Crusoe] known for giant AI buildouts announced that it had “paused” its plan to build a data center that would draw enough electricity to power a city the size of Denver. In reality, Crusoe is being pressured to leave the project, after Google had raised concerns about the costs and timetable under Crusoe’s watch, some of the people said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-11/crusoe-pu...
Crusoe was previously a bitcoin mining operation that pivoted to building AI data centers around 2024. They don't have decades of experience building data centers.
It seems Google disagreed with how Crusoe was running the project and decided it would be better to own everything itself, so it acquired the project.
Yeah crusoe was a bitcoin miner, then pivoted to using flared natural gas for compute, now AI neocloud. I interviewed there at one point; the engineers seemed allright but the leadership… very dodgy.
they don't have experience building datacenters, yet
> Crusoe Energy: Acts as the lead developer for the flagship 1.2 GW Abilene, Texas campus ("Project Ludicrous"), as part of Project Stargate, managing the execution, co-financing, and design of the data halls.
> Crusoe was previously a bitcoin mining operation that pivoted to building AI data centers around 2024. They don't have decades of experience building data centers.
Didn't stop CoreWeave. They very successfully pivoted from crypto to data centers.
We can’t build out data centers that are not running on renewable energy. It’s too critical to get global warming under control, and the AI build-out is going in the opposite direction of where we need to be heading, and at a huge scale.
It’s just greediness unhinged by lack of policies. And the voters have finally had a say.
A truly terrible thing, and if we were to proceed by putting civilization first over the biosphere, it would show how truly terrible we are.
That's the general pattern of technology. It makes us rely less on the biosphere, and in turn makes us more dependent on it. But since it is destructive, it also actively destroys the biopshere, which is the way technology grows 'organically'. It's a disease.
Not for nothing, but voters also have a say in what kind of car they buy. I checked the Q2 numbers -- when gas prices were high. In the US, 8% of people bought fully electric cars. Around 22% bought some sort of hybrid.
Each of these people made a choice about how they were going to affect the environment. The vast majority "voted" to use fossil fuels.
I could write an essay of pure rage about how many overtly liberal people in my life and online still decide against electric over minor or non-existent inconveniences or extra upfront cost (for people who definitely aren't broke).
These people will yell and complain about anything and everything destroying the Earth, but then when it's their turn?
"We just couldn't figure out how to make the extra 30 minute charge stop on our annual vacation work..."
These are some of the silliest takes I've ever seen. HN used to be full of intelligent people.
Data centers don't use a particularly large amount of energy compared to literally any other commercial human activity. You likely use more energy driving to the store once than you do firing off AI queries for an entire year.
> Data centers don't use a particularly large amount of energy compared to literally any other commercial human activity. You likely use more energy driving to the store once than you do firing off AI queries for an entire year.
But they do use a lot of energy when you consider all the development and resource extraction that they necessarily imply, a factor that most people don't put into their calculations.
For a datacenter is not just a datacenter; it's an incentive and pressure to get others to develop competing datacenters, new models, new products based on them, etc; and the resulting pollution and energy usage from that is astronomical.
Of course you as a person don't use a vast amount of energy, but in aggregate all AI usage does. You have to look at the impact at the macro scale; talking about per-person usage in this instance is absurd.
Huh? That doesn't negate the point? Yes in aggregate transportation still takes up 100X more energy than data centers.
Here's the hard truth.
Old economy: 20 white collar workers drive their SUVs 30-60 mins in traffic into an office building that needs to be heated and cooled 24/7, then drive home.
New AI economy: 1 guy works from home and agents in a data center do the work, using up 1/1000th the amount of energy.
If you actually cared about carbon emissions you'd be screaming that we should run toward the new AI-based economy.
Anyone saying otherwise is not a serious person. Now, of course you can complain about AI ruining in person socialization around the water cooler. That is real.
But energy (or water) usage as a complaint is not only wrong and counter-productive to the thing you claim to care about, but its also insincere virtue signaling to mask what is fundamentally just fear of a new technology.
I was wondering if a solution to the NIMBYs is to just put the data centres in other countries like Mexico? I understand it would be hard to have talent move there, though. I mean, this sounds so obvious, but I haven’t heard much discourse around it yet so I’m not sure how feasible it is.
I guess the main problem is infrastructure like energy, heat dissipation and local government. So, why not build them on Canada or Alaska? There are resources and could help on the problems I pointed out.
It's not like they're just trying to build data centres in the US. Google's building two in Finland (although all work has been suspended because they had trouble following local laws).
Presumably the value of data centers that (1) already exist and (2) already have deals to provide the energy (and water) they need is about to skyrocket.
And even more so the ones that have room for brownfield expansion on the premises. Adding capacity to a site that is already zoned and permitted could be relatively easier.
If that's the case then China is running circles around the US. They're actually investing in energy rollout whereas US is going as far as to pay companies to not build wind farms.
They will likely back out (this is infinite money glitch news for accounting) - see: similar from Nscale. No one company needs more data centers lol (you will not hear this from anyone who has a vested interest in using them as loan collateral).
Google announced yesterday they would invest $17 billion into this Wyoming data center project https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/infrastructure-and-clo...
> Data center upstart Crusoe is being pushed aside at an artificial intelligence campus it was developing in Wyoming after failing to lock in customers including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to people familiar with the situation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-06/google-ta...
Problems with Crusoe were already brewing back in June:
> The developer [Crusoe] known for giant AI buildouts announced that it had “paused” its plan to build a data center that would draw enough electricity to power a city the size of Denver. In reality, Crusoe is being pressured to leave the project, after Google had raised concerns about the costs and timetable under Crusoe’s watch, some of the people said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-11/crusoe-pu...
Crusoe was previously a bitcoin mining operation that pivoted to building AI data centers around 2024. They don't have decades of experience building data centers.
It seems Google disagreed with how Crusoe was running the project and decided it would be better to own everything itself, so it acquired the project.
Yeah crusoe was a bitcoin miner, then pivoted to using flared natural gas for compute, now AI neocloud. I interviewed there at one point; the engineers seemed allright but the leadership… very dodgy.
they don't have experience building datacenters, yet
> Crusoe Energy: Acts as the lead developer for the flagship 1.2 GW Abilene, Texas campus ("Project Ludicrous"), as part of Project Stargate, managing the execution, co-financing, and design of the data halls.
I believe Abilene is actually 1.21 GW.
> Crusoe was previously a bitcoin mining operation that pivoted to building AI data centers around 2024. They don't have decades of experience building data centers.
Didn't stop CoreWeave. They very successfully pivoted from crypto to data centers.
...to bankruptcy? Even Jensen Huang (Nvidia) said without Nvidia's help these "neocloud" enterprises wouldn't be able to exist.
I’ve got a task to talk to a couple of my customers about lifeboat projects after coreweaves hammering in the stock market this week.
We can’t build out data centers that are not running on renewable energy. It’s too critical to get global warming under control, and the AI build-out is going in the opposite direction of where we need to be heading, and at a huge scale.
It’s just greediness unhinged by lack of policies. And the voters have finally had a say.
Global warming is only a problem for a biosphere. Advancements in AI may mean that civilization relies less and less on a biosphere.
A truly terrible thing, and if we were to proceed by putting civilization first over the biosphere, it would show how truly terrible we are.
That's the general pattern of technology. It makes us rely less on the biosphere, and in turn makes us more dependent on it. But since it is destructive, it also actively destroys the biopshere, which is the way technology grows 'organically'. It's a disease.
Not for nothing, but voters also have a say in what kind of car they buy. I checked the Q2 numbers -- when gas prices were high. In the US, 8% of people bought fully electric cars. Around 22% bought some sort of hybrid.
Each of these people made a choice about how they were going to affect the environment. The vast majority "voted" to use fossil fuels.
I could write an essay of pure rage about how many overtly liberal people in my life and online still decide against electric over minor or non-existent inconveniences or extra upfront cost (for people who definitely aren't broke).
These people will yell and complain about anything and everything destroying the Earth, but then when it's their turn?
"We just couldn't figure out how to make the extra 30 minute charge stop on our annual vacation work..."
What the hell happened to this place?
These are some of the silliest takes I've ever seen. HN used to be full of intelligent people.
Data centers don't use a particularly large amount of energy compared to literally any other commercial human activity. You likely use more energy driving to the store once than you do firing off AI queries for an entire year.
> Data centers don't use a particularly large amount of energy compared to literally any other commercial human activity. You likely use more energy driving to the store once than you do firing off AI queries for an entire year.
But they do use a lot of energy when you consider all the development and resource extraction that they necessarily imply, a factor that most people don't put into their calculations.
For a datacenter is not just a datacenter; it's an incentive and pressure to get others to develop competing datacenters, new models, new products based on them, etc; and the resulting pollution and energy usage from that is astronomical.
Of course you as a person don't use a vast amount of energy, but in aggregate all AI usage does. You have to look at the impact at the macro scale; talking about per-person usage in this instance is absurd.
3% or so of electricity
And growing.
Huh? That doesn't negate the point? Yes in aggregate transportation still takes up 100X more energy than data centers.
Here's the hard truth.
Old economy: 20 white collar workers drive their SUVs 30-60 mins in traffic into an office building that needs to be heated and cooled 24/7, then drive home.
New AI economy: 1 guy works from home and agents in a data center do the work, using up 1/1000th the amount of energy.
If you actually cared about carbon emissions you'd be screaming that we should run toward the new AI-based economy.
Anyone saying otherwise is not a serious person. Now, of course you can complain about AI ruining in person socialization around the water cooler. That is real.
But energy (or water) usage as a complaint is not only wrong and counter-productive to the thing you claim to care about, but its also insincere virtue signaling to mask what is fundamentally just fear of a new technology.
>Anyone saying otherwise is not a serious person.
They're just lost in the sauce of the current DC fear campaign, which the media is happily tugging along for all those juicy ad views.
What happened to the other 19 people? do they just live under a rock consuming no power?
You have to be kidding me
I was wondering if a solution to the NIMBYs is to just put the data centres in other countries like Mexico? I understand it would be hard to have talent move there, though. I mean, this sounds so obvious, but I haven’t heard much discourse around it yet so I’m not sure how feasible it is.
I guess the main problem is infrastructure like energy, heat dissipation and local government. So, why not build them on Canada or Alaska? There are resources and could help on the problems I pointed out.
It's not like they're just trying to build data centres in the US. Google's building two in Finland (although all work has been suspended because they had trouble following local laws).
Yes, but I think they need some in North America for latency reasons.
>I was wondering if a solution to the NIMBYs is to just put the data centres in other countries like Mexico?
Or the NIMBYs
The thing is a lot of the opposition is simply anti AI so it doesn’t matter where you put them.
Presumably the value of data centers that (1) already exist and (2) already have deals to provide the energy (and water) they need is about to skyrocket.
And even more so the ones that have room for brownfield expansion on the premises. Adding capacity to a site that is already zoned and permitted could be relatively easier.
energy is the most valuable thing right now
always has been, we are just distracted by abstractions around it.
If that's the case then China is running circles around the US. They're actually investing in energy rollout whereas US is going as far as to pay companies to not build wind farms.
Yup. And while new coal development has stalled they have no qualms about using a huge amount of it for electricity.
Dont forget that the US is attacking the energy supply from both sides. Oil, wind, etc. Yes to all.
Well at least Trump seems to have invoked the final inflection point for "we need to get off oil"
Wyoming looks less regulated than Texas a Ohio now
This isn’t trans meta crusoe right?
First thing that came to mind as well.
no it's not, and we are old
They will likely back out (this is infinite money glitch news for accounting) - see: similar from Nscale. No one company needs more data centers lol (you will not hear this from anyone who has a vested interest in using them as loan collateral).
When the labs don't need to do rate limiting and quotas I'll believe this take.