Crusoe Energy Systems has successfully completed a $4.5 million seed financing round led by Bain Capital Ventures and Founders Fund Pathfinder, with additional participation from Wicklow Capital, Winklevoss Capital and Dragonfly Capital Partners.
“We are committed to building advanced technologies for flare mitigation that are capable of handling the large-scale gas throughputs required by today’s North American shale industry. Crusoe’s technology harnesses otherwise wasted energy for growing industries that require energy intensive computing, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence,” said Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe.
This investment brings Crusoe’s total funding to $5.1 million. Funding proceeds will be used to accelerate production of Crusoe’s mobile modular data centers to provide large-scale flare mitigation service for oil and gas operators across North America.
“The scale and technical sophistication of Crusoe’s digital flare mitigation system, as well as its execution in the field, is unique. Crusoe solves an important pain point for oil producers in the booming shale industry,” said Salil Deshpande, partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
Crusoe enables oil and gas producers to transform their wasted natural gas into electrical power at the wellsite, eliminating the need for gas flaring and significantly reducing environmentally harmful emissions. By converting natural gas to energy-intensive computing, Crusoe’s Digital Flare Mitigation (DFM) service achieves a beneficial use for natural gas, which would otherwise be burned onsite because it is too costly and complex to transport elsewhere. Compared with flaring, Crusoe’s process also achieves more than 99 percent reductions in emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO), which otherwise form smog.