startupfortune.com
Crusoe walks away from its $1.25 billion jet turbine deal with Boom
Boom Supersonic's 42-megawatt turbines were supposed to prove data centers didn't have to wait years for grid power. Crusoe has walked away from the $1.25 billion order, canceling all 29 units. Nine months ago, this looked like the deal that would prove data centers didn't have to wait years for the grid. Crusoe, the AI cloud company building Oracle's Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, signed on as the launch customer for Boom Supersonic's 42-megawatt Superpower turbines, a stationary spinoff of the jet engine Boom is developing for its Overture supersonic plane. According to TechCrunch, the agreement was worth $1.25 billion and was bundled with a $300 million Series B round for Boom led by Darsana Capital Partners when it was announced in December 2025. First deliveries were supposed to land in 2027. That plan is now dead. Boom CEO Blake Scholl wrote on X that turbines are no longer part of Crusoe's near-term primary power mix at Abilene and its other sites, so a launch partnership just didn't make sense anymore. Crusoe framed the reversal as a shift toward flexibility, pointing to wind, solar, batteries, turbines and ordinary grid power as options it can choose site by site instead of...