Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller says the artificial intelligence data center builder planned to purchase roughly $400 million worth of AI chips from Advanced Micro Devices to add to its portfolio of computing power.

The cloud computing startup plans to establish a data center - or cluster - to accommodate the AMD AI chips in the U.S. and will lease them to clients for developing AI models and executing applications. Crusoe intends to buy approximately 13,000 MI355X chips and implement a liquid cooling system.

According to Lochmiller, the chips will be located in one facility opening in the fall, which can be allocated to multiple customers or a single customer if they wish to utilize the whole cluster.

Crusoe's data centers are specifically designed to accommodate AI chips, enabling it to deliver better performance than previous models. The firm has created pre-assembled parts to accelerate the building of data centers, akin to how pre-constructed houses shorten construction duration.

"Where startups lack in scale and people and capital, compared to some of the hyperscalers, where we can compete is being nimble, fast and have a high density of engineering talent," Lochmiller says.

AMD's AI processors provide a choice against the devices marketed by Nvidia, which has led the industry. The AMD MI355X chips that Crusoe intends to acquire feature a substantial amount of high-bandwidth memory, making them ideally adapted for executing AI applications, referred to as inference.

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Crusoe is part of a group of firms developing cloud computing services tailored for AI businesses, typically by gathering substantial quantities of Nvidia chips. Nvidia has equipped these emerging companies with AI chips, partly to enable them to expand their revenue streams beyond cloud computing behemoths like Microsoft.