Crusoe, Blue Owl, Primary Digital Form $3.4B JV for Data Center Project
By Andrew Coen October 21, 2024 2:46 pm
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Crusoe Energy Systems has teamed up with artificial intelligence infrastructure company Blue Owl Capital and investment firm Primary Digital Infrastructure on a $3.4 billion joint venture equity partnership to finance a large-scale Texas data center development, the firms announced last week.
The JV will fund a 206-megawatt, 998,000-square-foot data center to be built and operated by Crusoe at the Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene, Texas. The project is 100 percent leased to an undisclosed “Fortune 100 hyperscale tenant” slated to begin occupancy in the first half of 2025, according to Crusoe.
Newmark (NMRK) arranged the JV with a team led by Jordan Roeschlaub, Brent Mayo, Andrew Warin and Chase Tagen.
“Crusoe’s leadership team has positioned the Lancium Clean Campus to capitalize on unprecedented growth from high-energy density IT applications, and the JV with Blue Owl and Primary Infrastructure only further supports those efforts,” Mayo said in a statement.
Crusoe said the build-to-suit, two-building development will be constructed with “industry-leading efficiency and reliability standards” and will accommodate air cooling. The data center at completion will operate up to 100,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) on a single integrated network.
The project is estimated to contribute nearly $1 billion to the local economy over the next 20 years, according to Crusoe, citing estimates by the Development Corporation of Abilene.
“Rapidly expanding demand for purpose-built data centers proves that markets know the future will be powered by AI,” Chase Lochmiller, CEO and co-founder of Crusoe, said in a statement. ““We’ve designed this data center to enable the largest clusters of GPUs in the world that will drive new breakthroughs in AI.”
Marc Zahr, co-president and global head of real estate at Blue Owl Capital, said in a statement the deal underscores the firm’s commitment for “deploying meaningful capital in support of high-quality hyperscale data center assets across the U.S. and abroad.”
Bill Stein, executive managing director and chief investment officer at Primary Digital Infrastructure, said in a statement there is “an unprecedented opportunity to deploy capital in the data center market” with expectations it will experience a “$1 trillion investment boom over the next four to five years in the U.S.”
Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com
