Aircraft startup Boom Supersonic said Tuesday it will start selling a version of its turbine engine as a stationary power plant, and that its first customer will be data center startup Crusoe.
Crusoe will buy 29 of Boom’s 42-megawatt turbines for $1.25 billion to generate 1.21 gigawatts for its data centers. Boom said it will announce more details about a turbine factory next year, with first deliveries occurring in 2027.
To commercialize its Superpower stationary turbine, Boom raised $300 million in a round led by Darsana Capital Partners with participation from Altimeter Capital, Ark Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, and Y Combinator.
Profits from the sale of Superpower units will go toward funding continued development of the company’s Overture supersonic aircraft, Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl told TechCrunch.
It’s an arrangement that Scholl likens to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. The satellite internet service is reportedly profitable, helping the company to bankroll the development of its rockets.
“I’ve been kind of keeping my eyes open for 10 years for what could be our Starlink,” he said. “I said no to a thousand things because I concluded they were distractions. This one we’re saying yes to because it’s so clearly on path.”
Boom said Superpower and its airborne engine called Symphony share 80% of their parts. Earlier this year, Boom’s XB-1 demonstrator was the first civil aircraft developed by a private company to break the sound barrier.
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Crusoe is paying $1,033 per kilowatt of generating capacity. For that, Boom will deliver the turbines, generators, control systems, and preventative maintenance. Crusoe will have to provide everything else, including pollution controls, electrical connections, and so on.
That’s on the higher side for that type of power plant. A typical airplane-derived — or aeroderivative — turbine costs around $1,600 per kilowatt, a price that also includes pollution controls, engineering, construction, land acquisition, permitting, pipelines, and more.
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