Tech and AI
Google takes over Crusoe's unfinished Wyoming data centre site and commits 17 billion dollars to build its first campus in the state
By Staff Writer | 8 November 2026
The developer confirmed the sale on Friday, a day after Google said it would pay for all of the power the Laramie County campus uses, much of it from gas-fired fuel cells with carbon capture.
Google has bought an unfinished data centre project in south-eastern Wyoming from the developer Crusoe and plans to spend 17 billion dollars developing it into its first data centre campus in the state. Crusoe confirmed the sale on Friday 6 November, although neither company has disclosed the price.
Google announced the campus in Laramie County, near Cheyenne, on Thursday 5 November, naming Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power and Related Digital as partners. Crusoe and Tallgrass had first announced the site in July 2025 as a 1.8 gigawatt development with the potential to grow to 10 gigawatts. Work was paused in June at a customer's request, and Black Hills said on 10 June that Crusoe was no longer the development partner, while the project itself continued.
Who pays for the power
The announcement was written by Steve Walter, Google's vice president for global infrastructure and energy. It responds to a common complaint about data centres in the United States: that their electricity demand pushes up bills for everyone else.
Walter wrote that Google will pay for all of the power the campus uses and, where it builds, will cover the infrastructure needs created by its own growth.
Google is making a long-term, $17 billion investment in the Cowboy State, designed to deliver lasting benefits for Laramie County families and businesses.
Steve Walter, Vice President, Global Infrastructure and Energy, Google
Because the main sources are gas-fired, much of that power will come from natural gas. American Electric Power is contracted to deliver a 702 megawatt fuel cell installation, using cells made by Bloom Energy, which convert gas into electricity. Most of the carbon emissions are to be captured and stored underground at Tallgrass's Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub. Google says this takes its contracted carbon capture capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt. Gas generators run by Tallgrass and Black Hills will supply more, and an engineering study is looking at fitting carbon capture to Tallgrass's combined cycle turbines.
Black Hills said in October that its agreements to serve the campus run to 2048. Electricity supply is expected to start in late 2027 and reach peak load in 2030, from a planned resource mix of 2.7 gigawatts including reserve margins.
Water, taxes and a second site
The Wyoming campus will be air-cooled to limit the draw on local water. Google expects it to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes for Laramie County and its School District 1, and says it met more than 200 residents at a community meeting in Cheyenne. The partners are also setting up a community council for the city.
Crusoe, valued at 30.9 billion dollars, raised 3.9 billion dollars in September. It is still working for Google elsewhere, as developer of a campus near Amarillo, Texas.
Independent developers can find sites and line up power, but delivering a campus of this size takes a balance sheet few of them have. Here the land and the power contracts have passed to the company that will use them.