Making AI Headlines · Page 5

Google Skips the Lease and Buys the Unfinished Project

November 7, 2026 at 6:01 AM EST · New York time

Crusoe has sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google, which is taking over development. The Denver-based developer had tried and failed to land Google as a customer for the site. Google reportedly raised concerns about the project's cost and construction timeline under Crusoe's management, and did not disclose the purchase price. Crusoe announced the project last year with infrastructure company Tallgrass, with a plan eventually to scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. That figure describes an ambition for the project, not an operating facility already using that amount of power. The site remains unfinished, and the new owner now takes responsibility for development. The transaction illustrates the scale and complexity of infrastructure for AI. A planned data center needs much more than a list of prospective customers: construction, cost and power all shape whether the project can become a working facility. Google, a potential customer that did not sign on under the earlier arrangement, has chosen to take over the project instead. There is an excellent real-estate joke buried in the sequence. The prospective tenant inspected the building, worried about the schedule and then bought the development. It is an unusually expensive way to ask for changes to the floor plan. For everyone else watching the buildout, the unfinished site is a reminder that even the cloud begins with a construction project and a calendar.

Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.