Chase Lochmiller is co-founder, CEO and chairman of Crusoe, an AI infrastructure company. His work connects the availability of power with the data centers and computing services needed to train and run models.[1][3]
Start with Crusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong →
Career
Lochmiller became Crusoe’s CEO in 2018. He previously worked as a quantitative researcher at GETCO and Jump Trading and as a general partner at Polychain Capital. He earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics at MIT and a Stanford master’s in computer science specializing in artificial intelligence.[2]
Contributions
In an essay with Cully Cavness, Lochmiller describes Crusoe’s beginnings bringing computing to stranded natural-gas sites. The company later moved toward AI-optimized data centers and a cloud platform. The essay frames site selection and the mix of energy sources as part of the infrastructure design, alongside computing equipment. It describes a transition in the company’s business, including the planned divestiture of bitcoin-mining operations.[3]
Ideas
His 20VC conversation covers energy and labor constraints, GPU depreciation, take-or-pay contracts and demand forecasts. Those topics connect the physical buildout with the commercial question of who bears utilization and hardware-lifetime risk. They offer a view of AI deployment in which securing power and construction capacity matters alongside access to accelerators.[4]
Tools, writing & talks
Writing, research & talks
Start here
A conversation about power, construction, computing contracts and hardware economics.
Begin with energy and labor at 21:48, then take-or-pay contracts at 39:14. Basic familiarity with data centers helps; no finance training is required.
Guest[4]Original sourceAn explanation of Crusoe’s transition from flare-gas computing toward AI infrastructure.
Coauthor with Cully Cavness[3]