Crusoe, the data center developer behind the Stargate project in Abilene, Texas, has hired a veteran San Francisco real estate executive as it races to build the sprawling networks needed to power artificial intelligence.
Crusoe, the self-described “AI factory company,” has brought on Matt Field as its chief real estate officer. Field has nearly 40 years' experience in commercial real estate, more than 30 of them spent at San Francisco-based TMG Partners, one of the Bay Area’s most prolific real estate firms. Its portfolio totals millions of square feet of Oakland, San Francisco and Silicon Valley properties.
The hire is the latest sign that the near future of the AI boom hinges on real estate.
The advancement of artificial intelligence will require a gargantuan amount of processing power in the coming years. Crusoe is building a massive eight-building data center complex known as Stargate, an OpenAI-led project with Oracle and the Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank. Crusoe has called the project “the new blueprint for large-scale data center development.”
Denver-based Crusoe created the role for Field as it builds out its team to keep pace with its rapidly growing portfolio of data centers.
“Critical to the infrastructure needs of intelligence are power and real estate,” Crusoe CEO and cofounder Chase Lochmiller said in a statement. “Matt is a one-of-a-kind deal maker that will help Crusoe deliver the creative solutions needed to meet the ever-expanding AI ambitions of our customers."
Leading real estate strategy
The real estate veteran joined TMG in 1993 as project manager and climbed the rungs to eventually become co-CEO in 2023. This year, Chairman and CEO Michael Covarrubias promoted Field to vice chairman.
In his new job, Field will lead Crusoe’s real estate strategy, including acquisition, leasing, capitalization and development management of properties.
Crusoe launched in 2018 by building banks of computers for bitcoin mining, but it pivoted in the last two years mainly to designing and building data centers. The properties are used by AI companies to power the development and operation of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. One prominent tech columnist recently summed up the current data center buildout as the “great American infrastructure project of the 2020s.”
Field said Crusoe is “building the foundational infrastructure for the future of computing,” and added that he aimed to “accelerate Crusoe’s energy-first approach to site selection, development of hyperscale and cloud campuses.”
Among the major deals Field orchestrated at TMG was the firm’s $450 million acquisition of 300 Lakeside Drive in Oakland, where TMG subsequently landed utility Pacific Gas & Electric as the building's lead tenant. The utility acquired the 910,000-square-foot building from TMG this year for more than $900 million. He also facilitated the sale of 945 Market St. in downtown San Francisco to Ikea’s sister company in 2020.
Crusoe raised $600 million in funding late last year, making the company worth $2.8 billion.