Crusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong

Chase Lochmiller is the Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe. Crusoe builds and powers the data centres that companies use to train and run AI. It has raised approximately $6.4 billion in equity, including its latest $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation. Its backers include NVIDIA, Founders Fund, Gavin Baker's Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:06 How Mountaineering Shaped Chase as a Founder 06:44 Why Having Money Can Make Founders Take Bigger Risks 09:54 How Crusoe Went From Bitcoin Mining to AI Infrastructure 13:15 The ChatGPT Moment That Changed Crusoe’s Strategy 17:05 The Real Bottleneck in AI Infrastructure Today 17:54 How Crusoe Built in 1 Year What Others Said Would Take 2.5 Years 21:48 Energy & Labor: The Biggest Constraints on AI Data Centers 25:32 Why Chase Says the Data Center Water Argument Is Wrong 26:43 Do Data Centers Actually Raise Energy Prices? 29:32 Why 50% of Planned Data Centers May Never Get Built 31:14 Why Data Centers Became Politically Toxic 33:48 The Economics of GPUs and AI Compute 36:39 Crusoe’s Strategy: Sell Data Centers, GPUs and Tokens 37:48 Building the “Exxon of AI Infrastructure” 39:00 Where the Highest Margins Are in AI Infrastructure Today 39:14 What “Take-or-Pay” Really Means in AI Compute 41:45 The Real Risk of GPU Depreciation 43:19 Why Old GPUs May Stay Valuable Far Longer Than Expected 44:20 How Crusoe Forecasts AI Compute Demand 48:27 Does the Lowest-Cost Producer of Intelligence Win? 51:55 Why Not All Inference Providers Are Created Equal 53:54 Open vs Closed Models: Where the Tokens and Dollars Go 56:10 What Managed Inference Looks Like in Five Years 57:00 Quick-fire Round ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Chase Lochmiller on X: https://twitter.com/ChaseLochmiller Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #energy #ai #founder