Meta Strikes New AI Computing Deals With Data Center Firm Crusoe : US Pioneer Global VC DIFCHQ SFO NYC Singapore – Riyadh Swiss Our Mind

(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. has secured new agreements to get AI computing power from data center developer Crusoe, bolstering the infrastructure it needs to support an ambitious artificial intelligence expansion.

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Meta is under contract to buy computing capacity from Crusoe at two data centers, according to people familiar with the situation. Those operations are located in Childress, Texas, and Warrenton, Missouri, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Meta is set to get roughly 1.6 gigawatts of capacity combined across the two sites, some of the people said. A single gigawatt is enough to power as many as 750,000 US homes at any given time.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much Meta will be spending or when the computing capacity will be delivered. Spokespeople for Meta and Crusoe declined to comment.

Meta, like its Silicon Valley peers, has been rushing to sign deals for more AI computing power. Its largest effort — a nearly 4,000-acre campus in Louisiana — is set to provide up to 5 gigawatts of capacity.

Crusoe, founded in 2018, specializes in building and running large data centers for AI work. It already has deals with Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google for three other data center campuses.

The upstart has stumbled in its efforts to expand some of those partnerships, however. Bloomberg reported last week that Crusoe was being pushed out of development of its planned data center in Wyoming after earlier deal talks with Google fell through. Oracle had also previously discussed buying computing power from the Wyoming site.

Crusoe said earlier this month that it had contracts for 4.9 gigawatts’ worth of capacity, with more than 40 gigawatts in its total project pipeline. That includes data centers where it’s still in discussions with tenants and sites under advanced development.

The 4.9 gigawatts includes a data center campus in Abilene, Texas, for Oracle and OpenAI, as well as one for Microsoft. A third Texas site, near Amarillo, has been contracted to Google, according to local media. Crusoe said last week that an additional site in Texas and one in Missouri have contracted tenants but declined to name them.

Meta, meanwhile, has pledged to spend at least $600 billion on AI infrastructure over the next few years. It’s under increasing pressure to show that social media giant will get a payoff from the massive outlay. Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, recently began selling subscriptions to its AI chatbot for the first time — a key step toward building up that business.