Robinhood is expanding its private-market exposure through an investment in Crusoe, a former Bitcoin miner turned AI infrastructure provider.
The deal links retail investors with a business now focused on power, computing, and large-scale data centers. It also reflects growing competition between artificial intelligence and crypto for energy, capital, and infrastructure. Crusoe’s transition shows how mining assets can gain new uses as AI demand accelerates.
Robinhood adds Crusoe to its private-market portfolio
Robinhood Ventures Fund I invested about $25 million in Crusoe as part of its planned $3.9 billion Series F. The transaction closed on August 31 and valued Crusoe at about $30.9 billion post-money.
Crusoe called the financing the first closing of the Series F round. Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners co-led the financing.
Nvidia, Founders Fund, Qatar Investment Authority, and RVI also participated.
RVI President Sarah Pinto said the fund focused on Crusoe’s infrastructure rather than AI models alone. She described Crusoe as a vertically integrated AI infrastructure business using new energy sources for data centers.
Robinhood Chairman Vlad Tenev made a similar point on X. He said AI infrastructure matters as much as the models running on it.
RVI began trading on the NYSE on March 6. The closed-end fund does not require accredited-investor status or a stated minimum.
Robinhood says customers can invest from $1 through fractional shares. RVI holds OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, Canva, and Crusoe.
The fund invested $75 million in OpenAI in April. Pinto previously described OpenAI as a frontier artificial intelligence company.
Crusoe gives RVI exposure to the energy and data-center layer supporting those models.
Crusoe reworks Bitcoin infrastructure for AI growth
Crusoe started in 2018 by turning flared natural gas into electricity for modular data centers. Those operations initially supported Bitcoin mining.
By March 2025, Crusoe had deployed more than 425 modular data centers across seven U.S. states and Argentina.
The company later sold its Bitcoin mining operations and Digital Flare Mitigation subsidiary to NYDIG. Crusoe then increased its focus on AI infrastructure.
Crusoe now reports more than $140 billion in total contracted value. It also has 6 gigawatts of gross contracted capacity, with 1 gigawatt operational.
CoinShares said listed miners with contracted AI or high-performance computing capacity trade at 12.9 times forward sales. Miners without such contracts trade near 3.7 times.
The sector carries more than $100 billion in AI and HPC backlog. However, that backlog represents only $1.1 billion in annualized revenue.
S&P Global has also recorded miners repurposing sites for AI and HPC use. Electricity remains a major constraint for both industries.
Gartner expects global data-center electricity use to rise 26% in 2026 to 565 terawatt-hours. AI-optimized servers could contribute 31% of that demand.
That trend increases the value of existing powered and permitted sites. It also strengthens the case for converting former mining infrastructure.
Crypto funding remains active. Galaxy Research said investors committed $5.683 billion across 384 crypto and blockchain deals during the second quarter.
That total rose 31% from the previous quarter, with later-stage funding driving much of the increase. AI now competes with crypto for capital, electricity, and data-center locations.
