The race to build artificial intelligence is no longer centred only on who makes the fastest chip. Companies also need access to power, data centres, cooling systems, and cloud services that can turn those chips into usable computing capacity.
Crusoe has become one of the biggest winners from that shift. The eight-year-old AI infrastructure company recently raised $3.9 billion in a Series F round that valued it at $30.9 billion after the investment. The round was co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners, with Nvidia, Founders Fund, GIC, Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures, and TPG also participating.
The valuation is roughly three times the figure attached to Crusoe’s previous funding round in October 2025. As such, it raises a bigger question about older hardware companies such as Intel. If investors are placing this much value on a company that began as a Bitcoin miner, has the centre of the hardware industry moved elsewhere?
Crusoe Is Selling the Full AI Infrastructure Stack
Crusoe began in 2018 by using natural gas that would otherwise be burned off at oil sites to power cryptocurrency mining. It later moved into AI infrastructure and now earns money in three main ways – it leases data centre space to customers with their own processors; it rents out its own graphics processing units; and it sells computing power for running AI models.
The company says it has more than $140 billion in total contracted value, over six gigawatts of contracted capacity and one gigawatt already operating, and its projects include the large Abilene data centre campus used by OpenAI.
It is also expanding Spark, a smaller modular data centre that can be built in a factory, transported by truck, and installed near available power.
Chief executive Chase Lochmiller describes this strategy as controlling infrastructure “from electrons to tokens.” The company has also reportedly signed a five-year cloud agreement worth about $13 billion with Jane Street, giving it a major source of committed business as it expands.
Intel’s Hardware Business Is Still Generating Growth
Crusoe’s valuation does not mean Intel’s hardware legacy is dead. The two companies largely operate at different points of the AI supply chain, and Crusoe depends on processors made by other companies, including Nvidia and AMD, to deliver its services.
Intel’s second-quarter 2026 results also show that demand for its products remains strong. Revenue rose 25% from a year earlier to $16.1 billion, while its Data Center and AI business grew 59% to $6.3 billion. Intel said demand for Xeon processors and other computing products helped drive the increase.
However, Intel’s manufacturing turnaround remains expensive. Intel Foundry reported $5.8 billion in segment revenue but posted an operating loss of about $2.1 billion during the quarter. Much of that segment revenue came from producing chips for Intel’s own product groups rather than customers.
Hardware Alone No Longer Defines the Winner
Intel remains a major chip designer and manufacturer, but Crusoe’s rise shows where new value is forming. AI customers increasingly want processors, power, buildings, cooling, and cloud access delivered together, without waiting years for conventional data centre projects.
For Intel, the pressure is now to turn its manufacturing scale and strong CPU demand into a broader AI business that can compete for more of that spending. While its hardware legacy is still alive, Crusoe’s $30.9 billion valuation shows that the industry’s next winners may be decided by how quickly they can put hardware to work.
