Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and chief executive of Crusoe, discussed the energy demands of artificial intelligence infrastructure and the company's Abilene, Texas project with Bloomberg's Dina Bass at Bloomberg Invest Dallas.
Crusoe began by converting otherwise-wasted natural gas into electricity for computing and has since moved into building large "AI factories", data centres engineered for power-intensive GPU workloads.
Its flagship site is the Stargate campus in Abilene, which Oracle selected Crusoe to build after OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle announced the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure programme in January 2025.
The initial phase comprised two buildings and more than 200 megawatts of IT capacity, with construction starting in 2024 and operations beginning in 2025.
A second phase launched in March 2025, adding six buildings and roughly 1 gigawatt, taking the planned campus to about 1.2 gigawatts across 4 million square feet.
Crusoe has since said Microsoft will add two more Abilene buildings and a 900-megawatt on-site power plant, expanding the broader campus plan to 10 buildings and 2.1 gigawatts.
Crusoe raised or arranged $11.6 billion in debt and equity for the Abilene project in 2025.
The site runs on a mix of grid power and an attached natural-gas plant, previously reported at around 350 megawatts, underscoring why AI campuses increasingly need dedicated generation rather than relying on the grid alone.
Texas grid operator ERCOT has forecast peak demand could reach roughly 175 gigawatts by 2032, nearly double its prior record, driven largely by data centres and AI.
Proposed large-project connection requests tracked in 2026 run far higher, an estimated 439 to 474 gigawatts, around five times the state's record peak demand.
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