NFL star Saquon Barkley jumps in alongside Nvidia to back AI data center startup Crusoe (www.businessinsider.com)

AI data-center startup Crusoe — which brands itself the "AI Factory Company" — closed a $1.4 billion funding round that values it at more than $10 billion, and among the long list of backers is NFL running back Saquon Barkley. The round includes heavyweight strategic and financial investors such as Nvidia, Valor Equity Partners, Mubadala Capital and Founders Fund. Barkley, who has previously invested in AI plays like Anthropic and Neuralink, joins a growing cohort of celebrities turning to tech venture investing. Crusoe has positioned itself as an infrastructure play for the next wave of AI by combining energy sourcing, AI-optimized data-center construction and its own Crusoe Cloud to reduce compute bottlenecks for model training and deployment. The company emphasizes clean-energy-powered facilities and already hosts customers such as Together AI and Fireworks. Nvidia’s participation is notable given the central role of GPUs in large-model workloads; the fresh capital will likely accelerate Crusoe’s capacity buildout and cloud services, signaling strong investor conviction in vertically integrated AI infrastructure as demand for efficient, scalable compute grows. This deal underscores how infrastructure — not just models — is attracting major capital and mainstream investors as AI scales.