# Crusoe vs Boundless

> Crusoe builds its own data centers and serves open models on a cluster-wide KV cache. Boundless serves open models plus GPT and Claude, tuned by its engineers.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/crusoe-vs-boundless · By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 29, 2026

## How they compare

Crusoe owns its power and data centers and rents NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. Its Intelligence Foundry offers serverless open models such as DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6 and Nemotron from $0.05 in and $0.20 out per million tokens, self-serve deployments billed per GPU-hour, tailored deployments with SLAs and serverless LoRA fine-tuning. A KV cache shared across the cluster lets one node reuse a prefix computed on another. Boundless serves open models from $0.04 in and $0.21 out, including DeepSeek V4 Flash, GLM-5.3, Kimi K3 and Nemotron 3 Super, most with 1M context, and resells GPT and Claude. It offers no fine-tuning.

Both sell tailored deployments with SLAs. Crusoe is the pick for agents that resend long shared prefixes, for fine-tuning and serving in one place, and for raw GB200 or B200 clusters. Boundless fits teams that want closed GPT and Claude beside open models on one OpenAI and Anthropic compatible API, and a tailored tier where its engineers choose the model on your evals, tested free for two weeks on real traffic.

## What each one does

### Crusoe

Crusoe started in 2018 turning wasted natural gas into power for computing and has since become a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company: it sources energy, builds data centers and rents GPUs through Crusoe Cloud. It designed and built the Abilene, Texas campus behind the OpenAI and Oracle Stargate project, planned at 1.2 GW, and in March 2026 announced an adjacent 900 MW campus for Microsoft. On September 17, 2026 it closed the first part of a $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B post-money valuation, and it reports over 6 GW of contracted capacity. Crusoe Cloud lists GB200 NVL72, B200 and AMD MI355X by quote, with H100 at $3.90 and H200 at $4.29 per GPU-hour on demand.

### Boundless

Boundless launched in September 2026 as an inference partner for AI-native startups. It sells two things. The Model API serves pre-tuned models on shared capacity, billed per token from prepaid credits with a budget per API key. Tailored inference reserves capacity for one customer, and Boundless engineers pick the model on the customer’s own evals, tune precision, batching, caching, speculative decoding and parallelism, then run the deployment against uptime, throughput and latency targets written into the contract. A free two-week evaluation tests those targets on real traffic against the customer’s current provider first.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Crusoe for

- Prefix reuse across a cluster
- Serverless LoRA fine-tuning
- Raw GB200 and B200 capacity

### Choose Boundless for

- GPT and Claude beside open models
- 1M context on most models
- Two-week trial of a tuned deployment

## At a glance

| Attribute | Crusoe | Boundless |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights | Open weights, plus closed GPT and Claude |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6, Nemotron 3 | GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3 |
| Speed | Up to 9.9x faster TTFT vs vLLM (vendor claim) | 342 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Vercel) |
| Price | $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M | $0.04–$2.30 in, $0.21–$11.40 out per 1M (open) |
| Customization | Serverless LoRA fine-tuning | Serving-stack tuning, no fine-tuning |
| Deployment | Serverless, self-serve and tailored dedicated, raw GPUs | Serverless API, reserved tailored capacity |
| Long context | Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache | 1M context on most models |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Crusoe and Boundless?

Crusoe builds its own data centers and serves open models on a cluster-wide KV cache. Boundless serves open models plus GPT and Claude, tuned by its engineers.

### When should I choose Crusoe over Boundless?

Prefix reuse across a cluster; Serverless LoRA fine-tuning; Raw GB200 and B200 capacity.

### When should I choose Boundless over Crusoe?

GPT and Claude beside open models; 1M context on most models; Two-week trial of a tuned deployment.

### Is Crusoe or Boundless cheaper?

Crusoe: $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M. Boundless: $0.04–$2.30 in, $0.21–$11.40 out per 1M (open). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

### Which has more context, Crusoe or Boundless?

Crusoe: Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache. Boundless: 1M context on most models.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Crusoe](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-crusoe.md), [Subconscious vs Boundless](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-boundless.md).

Full profiles: [Crusoe](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/crusoe.md), [Boundless](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/boundless.md).