I was reading post after post about the power crisis hitting AI data centers—GPU racks sitting idle, waiting not on chips, but on electricity. I texted with Sam Altman—who confirmed power was indeed a major constraint. I pinged our engineering team—and found that they already had the outline of a plan to build a power turbine based on our Symphony supersonic engine.
Today, we’re announcing Superpower, our new 42‑megawatt natural gas turbine, along with a $300M funding round and Crusoe as our launch customer. And most importantly: this marks a turning point. Boom is now on a self-funded path to both Superpower and the Overture supersonic airliner.
Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO, Boom Supersonic
Speaking of companies sidestepping their founding mission and jumping into short-term diversions to make a quick buck, here is the supposed trailblazer in supersonic aviation pivoting to energy generation for AI data centers. The tone of the announcement feels frantic, almost desperate for an ounce of relevance in a time when almost every company under the sun is scrambling to fit AI into their strategy – or at least their investor reports. The bit about the engineering team already having plans for a power turbine strikes me as quite odd as well: so, you’re telling me as a CEO you had no idea what your main engineers were working on!? And they were in fact not working on the airplane that should be your core product!?