--- description: Find out why Chase Lochmiller made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Chase Lochmiller image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte990d7f1f058b498/6998c92166d4e35537cbcbe4/Chase-Lochmiller.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 26, 2025 # Chase Lochmiller Co-founder and CEO, Crusoe by [Billy Perrigo](/author/billy-perrigo/) ## Billy Perrigo Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) On the second day of the second Trump Administration, the new President stood in the White House flanked by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and announced what he called “the largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in history.” The effort, called Stargate, would cost up to $500 billion—all to build the datacenters where OpenAI hopes “superintelligence” will be ushered into the world. In charge of building the first phase of the Stargate project, placed on a sprawling site in Abilene, Texas, is a little-known startup called Crusoe. The name descends from _Robinson Crusoe—_the 18th century novel about a man marooned on a desert island—and refers to the company’s use of so-called “stranded,” or excess, energy. Chase Lochmiller, Crusoe’s CEO and co-founder, says the company got its start building bitcoin mining operations in oilfields. Those servers were powered by gas that bubbles up to the surface alongside liquid oil, which would otherwise usually be burnt off as a “flare.” The company applied a similar mindset when it pitched Abilene as a potential site for Stargate. There was an abundance of wind energy in the nearby area, Lochmiller says, and such a dearth of demand that sometimes windfarms would actually paycustomers to accept their power. Lochmiller takes pains to point out the environmental credentials of the Stargate build. And it’s true that it will rely mostly on wind power (although like most data centers, it will still require gas turbines to provide backup power when the wind isn’t blowing). But even if individual data centers use renewable energy, they're still adding massive new demand to the grid. Data centers are expected to account for 12% of total U.S. electricity demand by 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023\. Several coal-fired power plants have already been kept online longer than planned to meet rising demand. But Crusoe’s chief executive remains optimistic. The increased demand, he says, has spurred a new wave of investments into clean energy. “A lot of new energy is being developed because of AI, to support the demand,” he says. “We need a lot more of that.” **Correction, Aug. 28** _The original version of this story used an outdated name for Lochmiller's company. It is now called Crusoe, not Crusoe Energy_. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305822/chase-lochmiller/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305822/chase-lochmiller/"},"headline":"Chase Lochmiller","datePublished":"2025-08-26T19:00:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:55:11.463Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305822/chase-lochmiller/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte990d7f1f058b498/6998c92166d4e35537cbcbe4/Chase-Lochmiller.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Billy Perrigo","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/billy-perrigo/"}],"creator":"Billy Perrigo","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte990d7f1f058b498/6998c92166d4e35537cbcbe4/Chase-Lochmiller.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305822/chase-lochmiller/","name":"Chase Lochmiller"}}]}] ```