According to Aviation Week, Boom Supersonic has secured a $300 million funding round and a breakthrough deal to build industrial gas turbines for AI data centers. The funding was led by Darsana Capital Partners, with participation from Altimeter, ARK Invest, and others. The deal is with energy company Crusoe, which has placed an initial order for 29 “Superpower” turbine units to power its Stargate AI data center in Texas. Each unit outputs 42 megawatts, and the order represents a $1.25 billion backlog. Boom founder Blake Scholl claims this is the “last round of capital” needed, as revenue from the turbines will fund development of the Symphony engine and the Mach 1.7 Overture airliner, targeting completion later this decade.
AI Saves The Supersonic Dream
Here’s the wild part. This whole side hustle started with a phone call from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Crusoe’s co-founder. They basically told Boom, “The grid can’t handle our AI hunger. We need power, and we need it now. Can you build us a turbine?” And Boom realized their supersonic jet engine core, built for high temperatures and thrust, was weirdly perfect for the job. It’s a classic case of a startup finding a lucrative, adjacent market to bankroll its moonshot. The insane electricity demands of AI are literally funding the return of supersonic passenger travel. Who saw that coming?
Engineering Synergy or Distraction?
On paper, it’s genius. The Superpower turbine shares its core—the high-pressure compressor and turbine—with the Symphony jet engine. So, every hour that turbine runs in a data center in Texas is a free, paid-for endurance test for the heart of the supersonic engine. Boom gets to tell the FAA, “Hey, this new core has already run for hundreds of thousands of hours on the ground.” That’s huge for a new entrant in the brutally tough engine business. But let’s be real. Building and delivering 29 massive industrial turbines is a monumental task itself. Can a team focused on a revolutionary airplane also become a top-tier power-gen supplier overnight? The potential for distraction is very real, even if they insist it’s an accelerant.
A Very Different Engine Path
This move highlights how different Boom’s engine philosophy is. While modern airliners use massive fans and small cores for efficiency, a supersonic plane needs a big, powerful core—more like a turbojet. That big core, which is a compromise for an airliner, turns out to be the ideal “heart” for a industrial gas turbine. It’s a happy accident of physics. And it gives Boom a potential production runway. They aim to ramp to over four gigawatts of annual turbine production by 2030. That scale could drive down costs and build manufacturing muscle for the aviation side. It’s a completely different business model than just begging for aviation investment rounds.
The Final Stretch Funding?
Scholl’s claim that this is the “last money we ever need to raise” is a bold one. We’ve heard “final round” promises from hardware startups before. The timeline is tight: a fully integrated 42-megawatt turbine on a test stand by the end of 2025, and the first Symphony core tests by mid-2026. That’s a blistering pace for complex machinery. If they pull it off, it’s a masterclass in creative financing and vertical integration. The industrial power market, especially for reliable off-grid solutions for tech infrastructure, is massive. If Boom can execute here, they’re not just building an airplane company; they’re building a diversified propulsion powerhouse. And for a project as capital-intensive as supersonic travel, that might be the only way it ever gets off the ground. Literally.
