The Twenty Minute VCCrusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong
Episode Details
EPISODE INFO
- Released
- October 3, 2026
- Duration
- 1h 5m
- Channel
- The Twenty Minute VC
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
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
SPEAKERS
Chase Lochmiller
guestCEO of Crusoe Energy, focused on AI infrastructure, data centers, and energy economics.
Harry Stebbings
hostFounder and host of the 20VC podcast and venture capital investor.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Chase Lochmiller and Harry Stebbings, Crusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong explores crusoe CEO on AI factories: energy bottlenecks, GPUs, and misinformation Chase Lochmiller explains Crusoe’s thesis that AI infrastructure will decentralize toward regions with abundant low-cost power, making energy the core bottleneck behind compute growth.
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