Crusoe Signs Perplexity AI Deal to Provide Cloud Capacity

Data center operator Crusoe struck a multiyear cloud deal with Perplexity AI Inc., an AI search company, continuing its push to win more business renting out artificial intelligence chips and related software.

Perplexity will use Nvidia Corp. AI chips from Crusoe to train and run models, as well as relying on Crusoe to manage the technology over its lifetime, Erwan Menard, a Crusoe senior vice president who oversees the cloud product, said in an interview. Crusoe will give more than 1,800 employees Perplexity’s Enterprise Max product as part of the agreement.

The companies declined to comment on terms of the deal.

Crusoe is best known as a data center operator for large projects like OpenAI’s flagship Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas. The company has been trying to expand a unit that competes with so-called neoclouds like CoreWeave Inc. and Nebius Group NV in providing customers with AI chips and software, and Crusoe recently signed a $13 billion deal with Jane Street for its cloud unit.

At the same time, some of Crusoe’s massive data center projects haven’t gone to plan. OpenAI and partner Oracle Corp. declined to take up a lease on an expansion of the Abilene site — although Microsoft Corp. agreed to rent it — and partners pushed Crusoe off a project to build a data center in Wyoming for Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

Crusoe Cloud offers Nvidia chips and those from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which is unusual — most neoclouds specialize in one type, usually Nvidia’s graphics processing units. Crusoe has cloud deployments in the US, Iceland and Norway and will soon add Israel, Menard said.

While Perplexity is a large customer of Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, and other major providers, Crusoe is helping the startup gain more access to Nvidia’s GB300 chips, which are important for its work, said Nate Kupp, vice president of engineering, enterprise and infrastructure at Perplexity.

Crusoe also has access to the latest Nvidia processors, called Vera Rubin, and has other contracted customers currently using them, Menard said, without specifying.

Having a cloud offering helps Crusoe attract customers who don’t want a massive data center of their own, while boosting revenue and profitability, Menard said.

“We love doing data centers at gigawatt scale and above because we make a big difference,” he said. But for smaller customers who just need access to chips or services, “we’ll give you that value-add under the hood.”