Partnership
Blackstone and Google launch $5B TPU cloud venture
500 MW of AI compute capacity online by 2027, with Google's custom AI chips available through an independent cloud provider competing directly with CoreWeave and Nebius.
- From
- Blackstone
- To
- New Google-Blackstone TPU cloud company (unnamed)
- Amount
- $5B
- Announced
- Structure
- Joint venture; Blackstone commits $5B initial equity from managed funds and holds majority stake; Google supplies TPUs, software, and services; new company offers TPU compute as a service outside Google Cloud
Why it matters
The structure is a standalone company, not a Google Cloud expansion or a Blackstone data center fund. Blackstone holds majority equity and brings its position as the world's largest data center operator; Google supplies its custom chips and software. The new company sells compute access directly, creating the first large-scale commercial competitor to CoreWeave built on chips other than Nvidia graphics processors.
The bet is that AI compute demand will stay large enough and long enough to justify building competing infrastructure from scratch. Blackstone's N1 division was set up specifically for this kind of AI infrastructure play; the named CEO is Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a Google infrastructure executive with over two decades building and running Google's global systems. The first 500 MW of capacity is expected online in 2027.