Energy Vault Breaks Ground on AI Campus in Texas for Crusoe Spark Modular Data Centers

Energy infrastructure company Energy Vault announced on July 27 that it has begun construction on a powered AI infrastructure campus for Crusoe Cloud in Snyder, Texas. The first phase, dubbed "Snyder AI," represents the initial stage of the company's broader strategy. This construction milestone demonstrates the implementation of Energy Vault's AI infrastructure strategy following the company's previously announced commercial agreement with Crusoe. The first phase will provide 8 MW of powered shell capacity for Crusoe Cloud, with the potential to expand to 25 MW in the second phase.

Construction activities are ongoing across the site, including site preparation, power infrastructure, and fiber installation for the deployment of the Crusoe Spark modular data center platform. Crusoe Spark units are designed for rapid deployment, with installation and commissioning times of just weeks, compared to traditional data center infrastructure.

The powered AI infrastructure campus in Snyder is designed to combine powered land, electrical infrastructure, N+1 redundancy, battery energy storage systems, and modular data center infrastructure. Energy Vault will purchase 10 Crusoe Spark modular data centers from Crusoe, which will be leased back to Crusoe as powered shell infrastructure. Crusoe Spark will distribute Crusoe Cloud compute capacity for training, tuning, and inference customers.

"This announcement is about speed and execution," said Marco Terruzzin, Chief Commercial and Development Officer of Energy Vault. "We announced our commercial agreement with Crusoe earlier this year. Today, we're building on that. Our initial 8 MW deployment is targeted for commercial operation in the first quarter of 2027. Energy Vault is providing AI infrastructure to help AI compute customers get from concept to capacity faster by combining land, power, redundancy, control, and modular infrastructure. Our relationship with the city of Snyder has been built through early community engagement, responsible site development, and investment in infrastructure, with the goal of creating lasting local benefits. Snyder AI is the result of this commitment, demonstrating how Energy Vault adds value to the community and generates recurring infrastructure revenue."

"Our Crusoe Spark modular data center program is a capacity accelerator and strategic differentiator for Crusoe and our partners," said Cully Cavness, President, Co-Founder, and Chief Strategy Officer of Crusoe. "Combining Crusoe Spark capacity with Crusoe Cloud offtake demonstrates the creative business opportunities provided by this project's vertical integration. We're excited to work with Energy Vault at their flagship Snyder AI site, which will demonstrate a repeatable and scalable model for rapid deployment on powered land."

The project provides capacity for Crusoe Cloud's expanding AI compute business and highlights Energy Vault's role as an infrastructure partner, providing solutions for critical deployment barriers, including land access, power access, reliability, redundancy, speed, and deployment, for AI and cloud customers.

Source: POWER Magazine