Crusoe Secured $65 Million Annual AI Inference Deal

Thinking Machines Lab will deploy open models on Crusoe Cloud to scale research infrastructure.

Updated on Sept. 23, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

Bold flat-color editorial illustration of stacked server components in navy, cream, and steel, representing cloud AI infrastructure. — Thinking Machines Lab has entered a $65 million annual deal to scale its AI model research using Crusoe Cloud's managed infrastructure. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Thinking Machines Lab has signed a $65 million annual agreement to run its open model lineup, including Inkling and GLM 5.2 and 5.3, on Crusoe Cloud. This move follows Crusoe reaching $100 million in contracted annual recurring revenue for its inference business.

Why it matters

The deal provides Thinking Machines Lab with the computational scale and economic efficiency necessary to support its ongoing research initiatives. It highlights the growing reliance of AI research labs on managed infrastructure providers to handle intensive model training and inference.

Thinking Machines Lab will utilize dedicated Nvidia HGX B200 systems, a significant performance upgrade over previous generation compute, connected via Nvidia Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking for high-throughput data transfer.

The players

Crusoe

A cloud infrastructure provider specializing in high-performance compute clusters and managed inference services.

Thinking Machines Lab

A research organization focused on developing and running open-source large language models.

The details

Crusoe will deliver this capacity as a Tailored Deployment, a managed infrastructure service that enables fine-grained control over the underlying compute and networking stack. By leveraging the Nvidia HGX B200 architecture, the system provides the hardware acceleration required to run sophisticated open models while Crusoe handles the maintenance and support of the cluster.

September 2026: Crusoe raised $3.9 billion at a $30.9 billion valuation and secured a $13 billion deal with Jane Street.
September 23, 2026: Crusoe and Thinking Machines Lab announced the $65 million agreement.

The Tech Race

This agreement positions Crusoe as a primary infrastructure partner for research labs aiming to achieve performance parity with industry giants. It reflects a wider industry shift where specialized cloud providers are increasingly competing with hyperscalers by offering bespoke hardware deployments for AI.

Researchers and developers can expect wider availability of the Inkling and GLM 5 models as Thinking Machines Lab increases its inference capacity. The potential implementation of batch inference for synthetic data may eventually accelerate the development cycle for future AI model iterations.

The takeaway

This $65 million deal underscores the capital-intensive nature of sustaining top-tier AI research in the current landscape. Watch for future developments regarding Thinking Machines Lab's reported efforts to raise $6 billion to fund its ongoing model research.