That valuation marks a striking jump. Crusoe had raised $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation just ten months earlier, in October, according to TechCrunch. The fresh capital is earmarked for existing data center projects, including a large site in Abilene, Texas, currently used by OpenAI, along with smaller, truck-transportable modular units the company calls Spark.
Retail Investor Access via Robinhood Ventures Fund I
What makes this particular Robinhood investment Crusoe stake notable isn’t the size of the check — it’s who gets to ride along. RVI began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 6 as a closed-end fund that requires no accredited-investor status and no minimum investment. Robinhood says customers can buy in with as little as $1 through fractional shares, putting Crusoe alongside the fund’s other holdings: OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks and Canva.
The Crusoe stake extends RVI’s bet on AI further down the supply chain. Back in April, the fund invested $75 million in OpenAI. Sarah Pinto, RVI’s president, described OpenAI at the time as “one of the frontier artificial intelligence companies.” With Crusoe, RVI is reaching for the layer underneath the models — the energy and data-center infrastructure that keeps them running. Pinto said Crusoe is “building a unique, vertically-integrated AI infrastructure asset that uses new energy sources to run data centers,” calling that energy-first approach typical of a frontier company that retail investors should be able to access.
Crusoe’s Pivot from Bitcoin Mining to AI Infrastructure
Crusoe’s story helps explain why an AI-focused fund would look twice at a company that started in an entirely different corner of the tech world. Crusoe launched in 2018, converting natural gas flared by oil fields into electricity for modular data centers — initially used to mine Bitcoin. Co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller said in a statement that he expects AI to usher in “an era of abundance,” but only through “controlling the infrastructure from electrons to tokens,” adding that Crusoe is “grateful to have investors who share that conviction,” per TechCrunch.
Transition Timeline and Asset Sale to NYDIG
By March of 2025, the shift became formal: Crusoe revealed that its Bitcoin mining operations and its Digital Flare Mitigation subsidiary had been sold to NYDIG, clearing the way for the company to focus entirely on AI infrastructure. Crusoe’s business model now rests on three legs, per TechCrunch — leasing data center space to customers who bring their own GPUs, renting out its own GPUs, and selling compute power for AI inference. In a deal valued at roughly $13 billion and spanning five years, the company recently agreed to supply quantitative trading firm Jane Street with GPUs and AI infrastructure, and reports indicate it has also held talks with investment bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley regarding a possible IPO. Crusoe also named three new board members alongside the funding round: Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert, Primary Digital Infrastructure partner and CIO Bill Stein, and Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel, who also sits on Tesla’s board and personally invested in Crusoe back in 2021.
Deployment Scale of Modular AI Data Centers
The scale of the buildout is what separates Crusoe from a typical infrastructure startup. By March 2025, the company had already deployed more than 425 modular data centers across seven U.S. states and Argentina. Crusoe now reports a total contracted value exceeding $140 billion and 6 gigawatts of gross contracted capacity, with 1 gigawatt already delivered and operational. Its customer list includes Meta, Microsoft and Oracle, according to TechCrunch.
Market Implications of AI Infrastructure over Bitcoin Mining
Crusoe’s shift reflects more than a single company’s journey — it signals a broader repricing of infrastructure once dedicated solely to crypto mining. Investors are now placing a premium on facilities and equipment capable of serving AI or high-performance computing needs, often valuing them far above traditional mining setups.
How AI-Ready Mining Assets Are Valued
According to CoinShares, publicly traded mining firms with confirmed AI or HPC agreements command an average forward sales multiple of 12.9 times, versus only 3.7 times for firms lacking such deals. This disparity matters because the industry is still in its early stages: despite a sector-wide AI/HPC order backlog exceeding $100 billion, current annualized revenue from these contracts totals just $1.1 billion, showing that much of the valuation hinges on future conversion of contracts into delivered capacity. Separately, S&P Global has noted that mining companies are converting their facilities toward AI and HPC use rather than continuing crypto hashing operations.
Power Usage Patterns and the Growing Need for Infrastructure
Power is the constraint both industries share. Gartner estimates that global electricity consumption by data centers will rise 26% by 2026, reaching 565 terawatt-hours, with AI-optimized servers responsible for 31% of that increase. That dynamic gives added weight to existing, already-permitted sites — the kind of locations that once hosted Bitcoin mining rigs and can now be redirected toward far more valuable AI workloads.
That said, none of this implies crypto is losing appeal among its own investors. According to Galaxy Research, $5.683 billion was invested across 384 crypto and blockchain deals in the second quarter, marking a 31% increase from the previous quarter, with later-stage funding accounting for much of that growth. AI is competing with crypto for capital, power supplies and physical sites, but Crusoe’s trajectory shows how fast the economics of that competition can shift: infrastructure built for one purpose can suddenly become far more valuable once it’s repointed at another.
Leadership Perspectives on AI Infrastructure Importance
Both Robinhood and Crusoe leadership frame this deal as a statement about where value sits in the AI buildout. Sarah Pinto’s comment about Crusoe building “a unique, vertically-integrated AI infrastructure asset” reflects a broader thesis at RVI: that the physical layer running AI models deserves as much investor attention as the models themselves. Robinhood chairman Vlad Tenev echoed that view on X, stating that the infrastructure underlying AI “matters as much as the models themselves.”
That framing matters for how the broader market reads deals like this one. As AI infrastructure spending accelerates and mining companies keep repurposing old sites for compute, the line between “crypto infrastructure” and “AI infrastructure” is getting thinner — and the Robinhood investment Crusoe deal is one of the clearest signs yet of where retail capital is following that shift.
FAQ
How much did Robinhood Ventures Fund I invest in Crusoe?
Robinhood Ventures Fund I invested about $25 million in Crusoe during its $3.9 billion Series F financing round.
What is Crusoe’s new business focus after pivoting from Bitcoin mining?
Crusoe shifted to building AI-focused data centers that use flared natural gas to power modular facilities.
What valuation does Crusoe hold after the latest funding round?
The deal values Crusoe at $30.9 billion post-money.
Can retail investors gain exposure to Crusoe through Robinhood?
Yes, Robinhood Ventures Fund I allows retail investors to buy fractional shares starting from $1, providing exposure to Crusoe.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
