Crusoe kills its $1.25B Boom turbine order days after a $3.9B raise
Boom Supersonic's turbine business just lost its only named customer and the anchor revenue behind its plan to fund the Overture jet. Crusoe, days after a $3.9 billion raise, is buying grid power and proven machines instead.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The launch customer walked
Blake Scholl broke the news himself. In an X post on Friday, after congratulating Crusoe's founders on their $3.9 billion raise, Boom Supersonic's CEO wrote that "turbines are no longer part of Crusoe's near term primary power mix at Abilene/etc., so a launch partnership just didn't make sense," and Crusoe confirmed the split 1.
What died was a December 2025 agreement worth $1.25 billion: 29 of Boom's 42-megawatt Superpower turbines, about 1.21 gigawatts, with first deliveries due from 2027 12.
The raise Scholl congratulated closed on 17 September at a $30.9 billion valuation, with Nvidia and the Qatar Investment Authority in the round 3. Crusoe's funding week then ended in a Texas permit freeze and a Bronze rating, a run of reversals the Boom exit now extends, as tracked in *Crusoe's $3.9 Billion Week Ended With a Texas Permit Freeze and a Bronze Rating*.
The jet was supposed to run on turbine profits
Boom built Superpower as a derivative play, sharing roughly 80 percent of its parts with the Symphony engine destined for Overture, and raised $300 million in December 2025 largely to commercialize it 12. The stated plan: stationary-power profits fund the airliner, which carries an order book of 130 aircraft including United, American and Japan Airlines 2. That plan now has no anchor tenant.
Boom's cancelled Crusoe order was bigger than its entire 2028 target
- Estimate
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Crusoe order, now dead | 1,210 MW |
| 2028 target (estimate) | 1,000 MW |
| 2027 deliveries, other sites (estimate) | 250 MW |
A famine, and still no taker for the new machine
The backdrop is the worst turbine famine on record. A heavy-duty GE Vernova unit ordered today arrives in 2031, Siemens Energy quotes three years or more, and Wood Mackenzie counts 60 to 70 gigawatts of world manufacturing capacity against roughly 110 gigawatts of orders 5. GE Vernova's book is full through 2029, about 20 percent of it feeding data centers 6.
Even that market would not take the product risk: Crusoe's 1.2-gigawatt Abilene campus for Oracle and OpenAI runs on grid power, and its 900-megawatt Microsoft campus will use conventional on-site gas turbines 1. A shortage deep enough to sell out GE Vernova to 2031 still could not sell the industry a turbine that has never run in the field.
Crusoe's gigawatt-scale sites run on grid power and proven gas, not Boom turbines
Data
| Megawatts | |
|---|---|
| Abilene campus, grid power | 1,200 MW |
| Microsoft campus, on-site gas | 900 MW |
| Cancelled Boom order | 1,210 MW |
Both sides left the door open, and the risk moved
Scholl says Boom will deliver about 250 megawatts to other sites next year, targets a gigawatt in 2028, and holds out a reunion, saying "the future is long" 1. Crusoe spokesperson Andrew Schmitt called Boom "a great partner" that is "not the right fit today," with Crusoe picking turbines, wind, solar, batteries or the grid site by site 1.
One report says Boom's backlog still lists the Crusoe order, and that Baker Hughes, which was contracted to supply generators behind the deal, is left exposed 4. The unnamed 2027 buyers now carry the delivery risk.
Watch the 250 megawatts
Crusoe keeps its capital and its schedule; Boom's jet now waits on customers it has not named and a 2027 delivery plan with no reference customer. First Superpowers running in the field, not pitch decks, is what rebuilds this.
How this brief was made
01Gathered & sourced191 channels · 1,114 articles▾
Agents swept 191 channels and ingested 1,114 articles, then de-duplicated and ranked them for signal.
02Verified & cross-validated6 claims · 30 data feeds▾
Every one of 6 load-bearing claims was checked against primary sources, with 30 live data feeds reconciling the figures and charts.
- 1TechCrunch, "Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers", 25 September 2026
- 2Unite.AI, "Boom and Crusoe End Superpower Turbine Launch Partnership", 25 September 2026
- 3TechCrunch, "Crusoe raises $3.9B to build massive data centers and small modular 'AI factories'", 17 September 2026
- 4Crypto Briefing, "Crusoe abandons $1.25B turbine plan with Boom Supersonic", 25 September 2026
- 5Oilprice via MSN, "The gas turbine shortage just became AI's biggest constraint", Michael Kern, 22 August 2026
- 6CNBC, "How GE Vernova builds the massive gas turbines powering the AI data center boom", 27 June 2026
03Reviewed & edited1 human editor▾
One editor read the draft against the evidence, tuned the framing, and signed off before it shipped.
Become a contributor
Reporting on the business of AI and want it read? We take pitches from outside contributors who bring primary sources and a number worth arguing about.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
