Crusoe ramps up large-scale battery purchases for data center expansion

Data centre developer Crusoe is significantly increasing its energy storage capabilities through major battery purchases from Form Energy and Redwood Materials.

The company announced that it plans to acquire 12 gigawatt-hours of Form Energy’s long-duration, 100-hour batteries. This marks Form Energy’s second major deal in recent weeks, following a separate agreement last month to build a 30 gigawatt-hour battery system for Google in Minnesota — a contract reportedly valued at around $1 billion, according to The Information. While Form did not disclose the financial details of its agreement with Crusoe, deliveries are expected to begin in 2027.

Even though Crusoe’s order is smaller than the Google deal, it is still expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Form Energy. The company is raising an additional $500 million and has already secured approximately $1.4 billion to date, according to PitchBook. Before these large-scale agreements, Form had mainly worked on smaller pilot projects with utilities interested in testing its battery technology.

Form Energy’s system is based on iron-air battery chemistry. These batteries generate electricity by reacting oxygen from the air with iron pellets, causing oxidation (essentially rust) and producing energy. During recharging, the process is reversed: electricity is used to convert rust back into iron and release oxygen.

Anticipating growing demand, Form Energy began expanding its first manufacturing facility in West Virginia last year, positioning itself to fulfil large contracts such as the one with Crusoe.

In addition to its agreement with Form Energy, Crusoe is also strengthening its partnership with Redwood Materials. The recycling and battery-reuse company, founded by former Tesla CTO J. B. Straubel, has been working with Crusoe on energy storage solutions using repurposed electric-vehicle batteries.

Crusoe has already deployed a 12-megawatt, 63-megawatt-hour battery system operating on a microgrid since June, which, at the time, was considered the second-largest second-life battery installation. Building on that deployment, Redwood Materials will now supply an additional 8 megawatts of power capacity using recycled EV batteries. These moves highlight Crusoe’s broader strategy to scale its data centre infrastructure while ensuring access to reliable and sustainable energy storage, as demand for compute power — particularly driven by AI workloads — continues to rise.