Blackstone to invest $5B in TPU cloud joint venture with Google

Blackstone (BX) announced a joint venture with Google (GOOGL) to create a new U.S.-based company that will offer efficient data center capacity, operations, networking, and Google Cloud’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, as a compute-as-a-service offering. The company will give customers another option to access cloud TPUs in addition to using them through Google Cloud. Google’s TPUs are custom chips purpose-built for AI, and optimized for training and inference of advanced AI models. TPUs also power Gemini and the AI-driven products Google delivers to billions of users globally. The joint venture between Blackstone and Google is intended to give customers choice and flexibility for running their AI workloads on TPUs. Under the terms of the partnership, Blackstone is making an initial commitment of $5B in equity capital from funds managed by Blackstone. The company expects to bring the first 500 MW of capacity online in 2027, with plans to scale significantly over time. Google will supply hardware, including TPUs, as well as software and services to the new company so it can accelerate to meet the growing demand for accelerated computing. Blackstone has named Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a Google executive with over two decades of experience building and operating Google’s global infrastructure and operations, to lead the new company as CEO.