| Crusoe, a data center upstart with contracts to supply AI computing power to the likes of Meta Platforms Inc. and Oracle Corp., has signed a cloud contract with trading firm Jane Street Group valued at around $13 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The deal, which will provide Jane Street with clusters of advanced AI chips known as GPUs and other infrastructure needed for AI training and inference via Crusoe's cloud platform, is a five-year agreement, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private information. Bloomberg reported last week that Crusoe was seeking a chip loan backed by contracts with Jane Street. ALSO READ: E2E Networks To Supply NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs In Rs 1,000 Crore Deal With Indian Sovereign AI Firm Jane Street is the highest-profile customer Crusoe has signed yet for its cloud business. The deal helped attract more interest in Crusoe's latest fundraising effort, according to a person familiar with the matter. On Thursday, Bloomberg also reported that Crusoe raised over $3 billion in a funding round that values the startup at roughly $30 billion, which Bloomberg first reported in July. Crusoe declined to comment. Jane Street did not respond to a request for comment. Founded in 2018, Crusoe was initially focused on capturing excess natural gas from energy fields to power crypto-mining operations. It later shifted into AI infrastructure and became known for developing big data center projects, including the flagship site of OpenAI and Oracle's Stargate project in Texas. In March, Microsoft Corp. agreed to lease an expansion of Crusoe's Stargate project that was originally being developed for Oracle and OpenAI after those two companies backed out of talks to occupy the new site. While Crusoe has primarily invested until now in its physical data center developments, it has also been selling AI cloud computing capacity itself. GPU-as-a-service cloud businesses - known as neoclouds - are taking off as large enterprises like hedge funds scramble for access to AI computing power. Jane Street previously announced plans to spend roughly $6 billion on services from the neocloud CoreWeave's AI cloud platform, with an additional $1 billion equity investment for the publicly traded cloud computing provider. ALSO READ: HUDCO Signs MOU With Bihar Govt To Develop Industrial Infrastructure Via Rs 25,000 Crore Loan Bloomberg reported in April that Jane Street was in talks to co-lead a funding round for Crusoe competitor Fluidstack at an $18 billion valuation. |
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