Robinhood’s newest retail-facing venture fund just placed a bet on one of the most closely watched pivots in tech infrastructure. The Robinhood investment Crusoe deal, worth about $25 million, gives everyday investors a small slice of a company that started out mining Bitcoin and now builds power-hungry data centers for artificial intelligence. The transaction closed on August 31 and folds into Crusoe’s much larger $3.9 billion Series F round, according to Reuters and Cryptopolitan reporting on the deal.
Key takeaways
- Robinhood Ventures Fund I invested roughly $25 million in Crusoe as part of its $3.9 billion Series F financing round, which closed August 31.
- The round values Crusoe at $30.9 billion post-money, up from a $10 billion valuation just ten months earlier.
- Crusoe began in 2018 as a Bitcoin mining operation running on flared natural gas, then sold its mining assets and Digital Flare Mitigation subsidiary to NYDIG in 2025 to focus entirely on AI infrastructure.
- Crusoe has deployed more than 425 modular data centers across seven U.S. states and Argentina, with a total contracted value exceeding $140 billion.
- Robinhood customers can access the fund with as little as $1 through fractional shares, alongside existing holdings in OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks and Canva.
Robinhood Ventures’ $25 Million Investment in Crusoe
Robinhood Ventures Fund I, known as RVI, put around $25 million into Crusoe preferred stock as part of the company’s Series F financing round, according to Reuters. The round, co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, brought in additional backing from Nvidia, Founders Fund, GIC, Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures and TPG, TechCrunch reported. Altogether, Crusoe raised $3.9 billion, pushing its post-money valuation to $30.9 billion — a figure confirmed separately by Investing.com’s coverage of the round.
That valuation marks a striking jump. Crusoe had raised $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation just ten months earlier, in October, according to TechCrunch. The fresh capital is earmarked for existing data center projects, including a large site in Abilene, Texas, currently used by OpenAI, along with smaller, truck-transportable modular units the company calls Spark.
Retail Investor Access via Robinhood Ventures Fund I
What makes this particular Robinhood investment Crusoe stake notable isn’t the size of the check — it’s who gets to ride along. RVI began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 6 as a closed-end fund that requires no accredited-investor status and no minimum investment. Robinhood says customers can buy in with as little as $1 through fractional shares, putting Crusoe alongside the fund’s other holdings: OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks and Canva.
The Crusoe stake extends RVI’s bet on AI further down the supply chain. Back in April, the fund invested $75 million in OpenAI. Sarah Pinto, RVI’s president, described OpenAI at the time as “one of the frontier artificial intelligence companies.” With Crusoe, RVI is reaching for the layer underneath the models — the energy and data-center infrastructure that keeps them running. Pinto said Crusoe is “building a unique, vertically-integrated AI infrastructure asset that uses new energy sources to run data centers,” calling that energy-first approach typical of a frontier company that retail investors should be able to access.
Crusoe’s Pivot from Bitcoin Mining to AI Infrastructure
Crusoe’s story helps explain why an AI-focused fund would look twice at a company that started in an entirely different corner of the tech world. Crusoe launched in 2018, converting natural gas flared by oil fields into electricity for modular data centers — initially used to mine Bitcoin. Co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller said in a statement that he expects AI to usher in “an era of abundance,” but only through “controlling the infrastructure from electrons to tokens,” adding that Crusoe is “grateful to have investors who share that conviction,” per TechCrunch.
Transition Timeline and Asset Sale to NYDIG
By March of 2025, the shift became formal: Crusoe revealed that its Bitcoin mining operations and its Digital Flare Mitigation subsidiary had been sold to NYDIG, clearing the way for the company to focus entirely on AI infrastructure. Crusoe’s business model now rests on three legs, per TechCrunch — leasing data center space to customers who bring their own GPUs, renting out its own GPUs, and selling compute power for AI inference. In a deal valued at roughly $13 billion and spanning five years, the company recently agreed to supply quantitative trading firm Jane Street with GPUs and AI infrastructure, and reports indicate it has also…
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