Google Buys Crusoe's Stalled Wyoming Site for a $17 Billion Campus

Crusoe has sold its stalled 1.8 GW data center site in southeast Wyoming to Google, which plans a $17 billion campus there — its first in the state. Crusoe announced the sale on Nov. 6. Neither company disclosed the price or terms.

The deal landed one day after Google's Nov. 5 pledge of $17 billion for a campus in Laramie County near Cheyenne. TechCrunch, which first reported the sale, said Google tried and failed to sign on as a customer of the project before taking over development itself.

What exactly did Crusoe sell?

Crusoe framed the sale as the completion of its pre-development work: site selection, government approvals and a hybrid power design built with Blackstone-backed Tallgrass Energy. CEO Chase Lochmiller said that work had "set up the Wyoming project for construction and eventual operation."

The power plan combines fuel cells, grid power and natural gas turbines, with carbon capture planned later through Tallgrass's regional CO2 sequestration hub. Crusoe and Tallgrass announced the project in July 2025 as a 1.8 GW AI campus that could eventually reach 10 GW.

Note what Crusoe's statement omits: no mention of Cheyenne, Laramie County, Google's $17 billion figure or any project code name. The details, however, match Google's campus precisely. Google's Nov. 5 announcement lists Tallgrass and Black Hills Energy as partners and describes power from:

• A 702 MW fuel cell plant built by American Electric Power with Bloom Energy fuel cells
• Gas generators run by Tallgrass and Black Hills
• Carbon storage at Tallgrass's Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub

TechCrunch ties Google's $17 billion pledge directly to the site Crusoe sold.

Why did the project stall in the first place?

Crusoe paused the Cheyenne campus in June, then known as Project Jade, saying it acted "at the request of our customer." Bloomberg reported on June 11 that Google had pushed Crusoe aside after raising concerns about cost and construction timing under its management, according to TechCrunch.

The local utility kept building through the pause. Black Hills Corp. CEO Linn Evans said on June 10 that the 1.8 GW project "has not been paused." The utility still expected service to start in early 2028. Black Hills also disclosed that the unnamed customer had paid over $200 million in refundable contributions toward generation equipment.

Google's control predates the sale announcement by months. Cowboy State Daily reported in July that a June 30 site-plan amendment filed with Laramie County named Jupiter Star Holdings, a wholly owned Google subsidiary, as builder in Crusoe's place. The project was renamed Project Tembo. The filing describes a 716-acre campus about 8 miles south of Cheyenne in the Switchgrass Industrial Park, with four data center halls and a target completion of 2031.

What remains of the Crusoe-Google relationship?

The two companies still work together in Texas. Crusoe said it remains the developer of a Google data center campus under construction in Armstrong County, near Amarillo.

Lochmiller said Crusoe now has more than 6 GW of capacity under contract and over 40 GW in its pipeline. In June, alongside the Wyoming pause, Crusoe put its contracted capacity at nearly 5 GW. The June pause, in other words, coincided with a roughly 1 GW jump in the contracted figure — though the company did not explain the change.

Crusoe raised $3.9 billion in September at a $30.9 billion valuation. Its other customers include Oracle and OpenAI at the Abilene, Texas campus, Microsoft at a separate 900 MW campus whose first building is expected in mid-2027, and Meta.

Google has not given a computing capacity or construction schedule for the Wyoming campus. AEP's fuel cell plant, which will sell power to Google under a 20-year agreement, is scheduled for full operation by the end of 2028. Whether the campus meets that 2031 completion target will test whether direct control fixes the cost and timing concerns that ended Crusoe's role.