The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) · Oct 3, 2026 · 1h 5m · 44m saved
With Chase Lochmiller, Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe
When Crusoe started buying Nvidia's Hopper chips in bulk in 2023, the feedback was that they might be worthless after year three. Three years later, Chase Lochmiller said, renting one costs more than it did when the chips were new.
Lenders wanted to be paid back fast on those early purchases. Crusoe now depreciates its chips over six years and expects to stretch that further, by selling older chips' capacity as cheaper AI services instead of raw hardware.
"Here we are 3 years later and the prices being charged for utilizing hoppers is higher than the rates that were being charged 3 years ago when they were brand new." — Chase Lochmiller
Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe, on The Twenty Minute VC, started the company after climbing Mount Everest in 2018 and ran it first as a Bitcoin miner on waste energy. Crusoe promised to build the first two buildings of its Abilene, Texas campus, a little over 200 megawatts, in one year, when the next-closest bid was two and a half, and host Harry Stebbings said it had just raised a $3.9 billion Series F.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 1 hour 5 minutes of audio, 21 minutes of reading.
Here are the 15 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
Crusoe made an electrical part with a 100-week lead time itself, in 28 weeks, to meet a one-year deadline in Abilene
A 140-megawatt AI building in Abilene uses about as much water as 10 single-family homes, Lochmiller said
The cooling water runs in a closed loop
Local power prices have come down where data centers were built, he said, the opposite of the popular story
He thinks 50% of planned data centers not getting built "seems reasonable"
Permits, land and utility hookups are where projects fail
Crusoe wants to be an AI "super major", selling data centers, GPUs and tokens the way Exxon sells across oil's whole chain
Managed GPU clusters are the most profitable layer right now, because of a supply shortage
Older GPUs are worth more than lenders expected in 2023, which is why he expects useful chip lives beyond 6 years
Customers spend more on closed AI models, but generate more tokens on open-source ones
Most competitive moats are an illusion, he said, and speed of adapting matters more
1. Think Like a Mountaineer
Stebbings opened with Lochmiller's mountaineering. Lochmiller said Crusoe has written it into the company's values.
Mountaineering is a company value at Crusoe
"One of our core values is actually to think like a mountaineer." — Chase Lochmiller
He said it means planning for change: a plan A for the summit, then plans B, C and D for bad weather, failed gear, a sick partner or an avalanche. It also means enduring long, hard stretches, and putting safety first, which matters for a company doing construction at Crusoe's scale and defending its platform from digital attacks.
"You know there's this saying in mountaineering that getting up to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory." — Chase Lochmiller
Most climbing deaths are preventable, he said
Stebbings said he had met an entrepreneur the day before who climbed Everest and showed him pictures of dead bodies along the route. Lochmiller said much of that tragedy is avoidable.
"You do see oftentimes people taking unnecessary, very careless risks." — Chase Lochmiller
