Boom Supersonic announced on Tuesday that it will begin selling a version of its turbine engine as a stationary power plant. Its first customer will be the data center startup Crusoe, which has agreed to purchase 29 of Boom’s 42-megawatt turbines for $1.25 billion. This order will provide 1.21 gigawatts of power for Crusoe’s data centers.
Boom plans to announce more details about a dedicated turbine factory next year, with the first deliveries scheduled for 2027. To commercialize this new product, called Superpower, the company raised $300 million in a funding round led by Darsana Capital Partners. Other participants included Altimeter Capital, Ark Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, and Y Combinator.
Profits from the sale of Superpower units will fund the continued development of Boom’s Overture supersonic aircraft. Founder and CEO Blake Scholl compared this arrangement to SpaceX using its profitable Starlink satellite service to finance rocket development. He described the power plant venture as a strategic, on-path opportunity after a decade of seeking the right parallel business.
The Superpower stationary turbine shares 80% of its parts with Boom’s airborne Symphony engine. Earlier this year, Boom’s XB-1 demonstrator became the first civil aircraft developed by a private company to break the sound barrier.
Crusoe is paying approximately $1,033 per kilowatt of generating capacity. For that price, Boom will supply the turbines, generators, control systems, and preventative maintenance. Crusoe remains responsible for additional components like pollution controls and electrical connections.
This price sits on the higher side for this type of power plant. A typical aeroderivative turbine project costs around $1,600 per kilowatt, but that comprehensive price includes pollution controls, engineering, construction, land acquisition, permitting, and pipelines. In a standard project, the turbine and pollution controls account for about 46% of the total cost. Applying that percentage to Boom’s figures suggests a total project cost likely exceeding $2,000 per kilowatt. That is expensive for a simple-cycle gas turbine and more aligned with costs projected for combined-cycle gas turbines in the early 2030s.
Boom’s Superpower is targeting 39% efficiency, which is similar to competitors. Combined-cycle turbines, which recover heat from exhaust, can achieve efficiencies above 60%. Boom is developing a field upgrade to convert its turbines from simple cycle to combined cycle. Operators could implement this using existing combined-cycle kits, though such additions would require longer installation times and more construction.
Like other aeroderivative turbine generators, the Superpower unit will be delivered in a shipping container. Developers like Crusoe will handle the electrical and gas hookups and install pollution controls. Scholl stated the power plants should be no louder than existing aeroderivative turbines, though such noise can be significant; residents near other data centers have reported hearing similarly sized turbines from at least half a mile away.
The first batch of stationary turbines will be manufactured at Boom’s existing facilities while the company constructs a larger factory. The production goal is to output 1 gigawatt worth of turbines in 2028, 2 gigawatts in 2029, and 4 gigawatts in 2030. Achieving these numbers would represent a significant expansion in the available supply of turbines for deployment.
Boom still faces a challenging few years ahead. Successfully scaling production is difficult, and many hardware startups have struggled to cross the valley of death that separates early-stage companies from established commercial peers. If Boom can pull it off, however, the profits could accelerate the development of commercial supersonic flights sooner than even the company expected.