- Blackstone will invest $5 billion in a new AI infrastructure company with Google
- The company will build large-scale AI compute capacity using Google's TPUs
- First 500 megawatts of compute capacity expected by 2027 with plans to scale
Blackstone and Google are joining forces for a massive new AI infrastructure project in the US. On Monday, Blackstone announced that it will invest $5 billion in equity capital into a new artificial intelligence infrastructure company being built with Google.
The new company, which has not yet been named, will focus on creating large-scale AI computing capacity powered by Google's tensor processing units, or TPUs. These are Google's custom-built AI chips designed specifically for handling artificial intelligence workloads.
According to Blackstone, the first 500 megawatts of compute capacity are expected to come online by 2027. The company also said there are “plans to scale significantly over time.”
Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone, said in a statement, “This new company has enormous potential as it helps to meet the unprecedented demand for compute.” The venture will be led by Benjamin Treynor Sloss, who previously served as Google's chief programs officer.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Blackstone is expected to hold a majority stake in the company, citing sources familiar with the matter. The report also said the venture has already identified several possible data center locations, with some sites reportedly already under construction.
Blackstone, which manages more than $1.3 trillion in assets, has been expanding aggressively in the AI space. Earlier this month, the company also launched a similar venture with Anthropic.
The deal also highlights the growing competition between Google and Nvidia in AI hardware.
While Nvidia's GPUs currently dominate the AI market, Google has increasingly pushed its own TPUs as an alternative. Unlike GPUs, which are designed for broader computing tasks, TPUs are built specifically for AI processing and machine learning applications.
Google has used TPUs internally for years and also powers its Gemini AI models with them. The growing demand for AI chips exploded after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, helping Nvidia become the world's most valuable company in 2024. Following the announcement, shares of both Alphabet and Blackstone rose about 1% in pre-market trading.
