Google acquires Crusoe’s Wyoming data center site after pre-development work

Google has acquired Crusoe’s data center site in southeast Wyoming, taking over a project whose groundwork includes governmental approvals and a power strategy developed with Tallgrass Energy. Crusoe disclosed the acquisition on November 6, 2026, a day after Google announced a $17 billion long-term investment tied to its first data center in the state.

A handoff after land, approvals and power planning

The transaction completes Crusoe’s pre-development engagement on the Wyoming project. That work covered choosing the site, securing governmental approvals and developing its power strategy—not operating a finished data center. Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller said the company’s pre-construction efforts had prepared the project for construction and eventual operation.

Crusoe and Tallgrass initiated the campus by developing the power and data center infrastructure together. According to Crusoe, that required parallel coordination of energy-system design, data center engineering, site development and engagement with a large cloud operator. The work linked the location decision to the design of the electricity supply, rather than treating those as separate tasks.

How the campus would get its electricity

Crusoe describes a hybrid supply combining fuel cells, grid electricity and natural-gas turbines. Google’s November 5 announcement provides more detail: the project is contracted with American Electric Power for a planned 702-megawatt fuel-cell development with carbon capture and storage. That figure describes the fuel-cell power development, not the data center’s computing capacity.

Bloom Energy will manufacture the fuel cells in the United States. They will convert natural gas into electricity through an electrochemical reaction. Google says this approach will help minimize emissions and water use in power production, but natural gas remains the fuel. Carbon capture is a separate part of the proposed system.

Google says the capture equipment will collect a large majority of the fuel-cell development’s carbon emissions for permanent underground storage at Tallgrass’s nearby Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub. Crusoe describes carbon capture through Tallgrass’s regional hub as part of the campus’s long-term roadmap. Neither description makes it an already operating emissions-control system.

The other gas generation has a different status. Google says it will also source electricity from generators operated by Tallgrass and Black Hills Energy. A front-end engineering and design study will evaluate adding carbon capture to Tallgrass’s combined-cycle turbines. That study is an assessment of a possible retrofit, distinct from the contracted fuel-cell development.

Water use and local costs shape the buildout

Google says the Wyoming data center will use air cooling to minimize pressure on local water resources. It also pledges to pay for all the electricity it uses and cover infrastructure needs directly driven by its growth. Those commitments address both the facility’s resource demands and who bears the associated costs.

The company says a recent Cheyenne community meeting drew more than 200 Laramie County residents. Their priorities included clearer economic benefits, career opportunities and the effects of data center growth beyond Google’s own project. Google and its partners are establishing a Community Council to address that wider growth. With the site acquired, those commitments sit alongside the engineering work required to turn the prepared campus into an operating facility.