Crusoe Spark x Redwood Energy
By Cully Cavness, Co-Founder, President, and COO
To catalyze AI's potential without harming the planet, we must first solve its fundamental energy challenge: finding power that's both sustainable and reliable. That's why we're thrilled to announce our groundbreaking partnership with Redwood Materials, the leading battery recycling and materials company.
On June 26, we jointly unveiled a new prototype of the AI factory of tomorrow, featuring the world’s largest second-life battery deployment. This first deployment seamlessly integrates Crusoe Spark™, our modular AI data center, with battery energy storage provided by Redwood’s second-life EV batteries. This collaboration showcases how we can unlock more renewable energy, forging a path toward sustainable, scalable, and rapidly deployable power solutions for AI infrastructure by tackling AI's monumental power challenge head-on.
A New Renewable Blueprint for AI Energy
While renewable energy offers a cleaner path for AI, its inherent intermittency poses a significant hurdle for meeting AI computing’s demand for high uptime and reliability. Renewables, when paired with battery energy storage, can address this challenge; however, the high cost and resource demands of new batteries present yet another issue.
Crusoe and Redwood have developed a unique solution that tackles this head-on: our first deployment at Redwood’s Tahoe campus in Nevada integrates North America's largest solar microgrid with second-life EV batteries. This allows an AI data center to run seamlessly and continuously on renewable solar power, even long after sunset, while significantly reducing costs.
In this first-of-its-kind deployment, a Crusoe Spark modular AI data center located on Redwood's campus is powered by a sprawling 20-acre solar array and solar energy stored in approximately five acres of repurposed used EV battery packs. Redwood's advanced control system orchestrates the diverse battery chemistries in these packs, ensuring a unified, continuous flow of clean energy to the Crusoe Spark data center around the clock.
This partnership brings together two crucial components: cutting-edge AI compute infrastructure and a sustainable, cost-effective battery storage solution. Redwood's new business line, Redwood Energy, is uniquely positioned to deliver this by repurposing used EV battery packs that still retain most of their capacity, turning them into modular energy storage systems. This approach unlocks more clean energy and provides a more sustainable, faster, and lower-cost backup alternative to traditional grid connections or diesel generators. It's a testament to what's possible when innovation meets a commitment to climate action.
For the future of AI, this means we can scale computing power where it's needed most, with a significantly reduced environmental footprint and a faster path to deployment. We're enabling AI to grow without being limited by grid or location constraints and making it possible to integrate more renewable energy to power AI through cost-effective battery energy storage.
As our CEO and co-founder Chase Lochmiller puts it, "One of the greatest challenges of our time is rapidly scaling the energy needed to support AI. By leveraging Redwood's revolutionary recycled battery systems with a solar array to power Crusoe Spark units, we've demonstrated how you can quickly deploy the energy and data center needs required to meet the demand of AI in a cost-effective and sustainably powered way," said Chase Lochmiller, CEO and co-founder of Crusoe. "This is the first of many such deployments, and a prime example of Crusoe's energy-first approach to AI infrastructure from the ground up."
Introducing Crusoe Spark
A key innovation driving the future of AI compute is Crusoe Spark — our brand new turnkey, modular AI data center solution. Designed for high-performance AI workloads, Crusoe Spark simplifies and accelerates the deployment of critical compute infrastructure, making it accessible and scalable. While it's powered by Redwood's technology in this specific deployment, Crusoe Spark is a versatile solution ready to connect to diverse power sources.
Crusoe Spark is a self-contained, prefabricated AI factory that can be installed in any location, making it an ideal edge computing solution. It integrates all the critical infrastructure you need (advanced cooling, remote monitoring, fire suppression, and racks ready for the latest GPUs) into a single, portable unit.
What makes Crusoe Spark unique?
Fast: These AI-optimized modular data centers can be delivered and deployed within months, drastically cutting down on typical data center build times.
Powerful: Crusoe Spark offers high-density infrastructure, designed to support the most advanced GPUs and handle immense computational workloads. It provides a robust electrical and cooling environment for high-performance computing, ready to connect to your chosen power source.
Scalable: Need more compute? Crusoe Spark units are extensible and can be combined to form integrated compute clusters, allowing you to expand your AI processing capacity with ease.
Proven: Crusoe has prior experience operating modular data centers in remote locations for AI cloud computing and cryptocurrency mining. We’ve leveraged years of field operating experience to engineer Spark for high reliability.
What can you do with Crusoe Spark? The applications are vast:
Edge Inference: Deploy compact, fully integrated modular data centers for low-latency AI compute services right where the data is generated.
On-Premise AI: Provide tailored, very low-latency services like video monitoring and image recognition using local AI compute resources.
AI Compute Capacity Expansion: Rapidly scale the AI processing capacity of new or existing facilities.
High Performance Compute: Tackle massive computations, process vast datasets, perform complex simulations, and solve intricate research and engineering challenges.
AI Test Pilots: Quickly deploy and evaluate AI systems in controlled, real-world, or simulated environments before widespread deployment.
It's an outdoor-rated solution, optimized for transport (59’ L x 13.5’ W x 13’ H), making deployment straightforward and efficient.
A New Chapter for AI and Energy
This initial deployment is just the beginning. We're actively planning to expand this unique partnership model — combining multiple gigawatt-hours of Redwood's second-life EV batteries with Crusoe Spark — to power future AI factories. This robust collaboration proves that economic viability and environmental responsibility can, and must, go hand in hand in the age of AI.
Ready to explore how Crusoe Spark can help you achieve your AI goals? Reach out to [email protected] to learn more about Crusoe Spark today.
