Boom and Crusoe End Superpower Turbine Launch Partnership

Boom Supersonic founder and CEO Blake Scholl said on September 25, 2026, that Crusoe and Boom are no longer launching the Superpower natural-gas turbine together, ending a partnership announced in December 2025 in which Crusoe ordered 29 of the turbines as Superpower’s launch customer.

Scholl Discloses the Change on X

In a post on X at 22:37 UTC on September 25, 2026, Scholl wrote: “Crusoe and Boom are no longer launching our Superpower turbine together.” He opened the post by congratulating Crusoe and its co-founder and CEO, Chase Lochmiller, on the company’s successes and recent megaround.

Scholl said Boom will deliver about 250 megawatts of Superpower turbines to other sites next year and is targeting 1 gigawatt in 2028. He said Boom remains grateful for the help Crusoe provided in shaping Superpower and continues to cheer for Crusoe’s successes, adding that Boom looks forward to potentially teaming up with Crusoe again in the future.

The December 2025 Launch Agreement

Boom’s December 9, 2025 announcement disclosed a backlog of more than $1.25 billion for Superpower and revealed Crusoe as the turbine’s launch customer. Crusoe had ordered 29 Superpower units, a 1.21-gigawatt order intended to power its AI data centers. The announcement coincided with a $300 million funding round led by Darsana Capital Partners, with participation from Altimeter Capital, ARK Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, and Y Combinator.

Superpower is a 42-megawatt natural-gas turbine built around the engine core of Symphony, the supersonic jet engine Boom is developing for its Overture airliner. According to Boom, the unit holds its full rated output in ambient temperatures exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit, operates without water, runs on natural gas with backup diesel capability, and fits in a shipping-container-scale package. Boom said at the time that its total turbine production was planned to ramp to more than 4 gigawatts annually by 2030 and that Superpower revenue would finance certification and delivery of Overture. Boom’s Overture order book stood at 130 aircraft, including orders and pre-orders from United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines.

In the December announcement, Lochmiller said Crusoe was proud to partner with Boom as Superpower’s launch customer and described the initiative as aligned with Crusoe’s energy-first approach. Scholl said then that with the financing and the first Superpower order, Boom was funded to deliver both its engine and its airliner.

Turbine Design and Production Plans

In a FlyBy post published the same day, Scholl wrote that the idea began with posts he read about power constraints hitting AI data centers and a text exchange with Sam Altman, and that roughly three months later Boom had a signed 1.21-gigawatt deal and had started manufacturing the first turbine.

Scholl wrote that legacy aeroderivative turbines, which he described as fundamentally modified jet engines, begin losing power at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and lose 20 to 30 percent of their generation capacity at 110 degrees, while Superpower maintains its full 42-megawatt output without derating and without water. He also wrote that Superpower inherits the cloud-native telemetry and operations stack Boom built for its XB-1 demonstrator, with each turbine streaming real-time performance data, supporting remote control, and flagging anomalies.

Superpower and Symphony share an identical engine core with a slightly tuned low spool, he wrote. In place of Symphony’s hollow-core titanium fan, Superpower adds two compressor stages and a three-stage free power turbine connected to a high-efficiency generator, and uses fuel nozzles optimized for natural gas rather than Jet A. Scholl described a vertically integrated Superpower Superfactory, writing that production equipment supporting 2 gigawatts per year was already on order. Boom said 95 percent of the parts for its Symphony engine core prototype were in manufacturing, with testing slated to begin in 2026 at its Colorado test facility.

Crusoe’s Series F and Energy-First Strategy

The megaround Scholl referenced was Crusoe’s September 17, 2026 announcement of the initial closing of its anticipated $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion post-money valuation. The oversubscribed round was co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, with backing from investors including Founders Fund, GIC, NVIDIA, the Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures, and TPG.

Crusoe reported more than $140 billion in total contracted value across its platform and over 6 gigawatts of gross contracted capacity across data centers and cloud, with 1 gigawatt delivered and operational. The company describes an energy-first strategy that pairs in-house power plant development with partnerships spanning grid, battery, nuclear, thermal, and renewable energy providers. Crusoe said OpenAI trained Astra, its first artificial general intelligence, at the Abilene campus Crusoe designed and built, and reported a workforce of more than 1,800 people across five countries.