AI Startup Backed by Billionaire Peter Thiel's Founders Fund Raises $500 Million

Crusoe Energy is set to secure approximately $500 million in equity capital from investors including billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

VC Firms Pour Billions into AI Startups

Crusoe Energy, a vertically integrated artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company, is set to secure approximately $500 million in equity capital from investors including billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The capital, which values the startup at $3 billion, will be used to bolster Crusoe Energy’s AI infrastructure.

According to a report, the startup’s valuation has doubled in two years. The announcement of the capital raise comes just weeks after Crusoe Energy announced a $3.4 billion joint venture to fund purpose-built data center capacity at Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene, Texas.

At the time of the announcement, Crusoe Energy CEO Chase Lochmiller praised the investment from joint venture partners as a reflection of the startup’s proven ability to meet growing demand for AI compute, powered sustainably. According to a Financial Times report, Founders Fund, which also backed OpenAI, has participated in Crusoe Energy’s capital-raising efforts since the seed round in 2019.

While Crusoe Energy executives reportedly declined to comment on the capital raise, the investment is the latest significant capital infusion for an AI startup since the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. Other AI firms with significant capital raises and high valuations include Openai, which reportedly raised $6.6 billion, valuing the company at over $157 billion. Coreweave, the New Jersey-based cloud computing startup, has reportedly raised $12 billion in debt and equity over the past 18 months.

Thiel’s Founders Fund and other venture capital (VC) firms’ growing interest in AI is further demonstrated by a PitchBook report indicating that 40% of the $93 billion spent in the first half of 2024 went to AI firms. However, according to the Financial Times report, VC firms are primarily interested in funding infrastructure to support AI or applications using the technology.

Since its shift to building data centers, Crusoe Energy has acquired a large quantity of AI chips and is leasing its cloud computing technology to AI firms. The startup also purchased thousands of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs with the $200 million it raised in late 2023.