Google, Blackstone launch cloud company as Wall Street races to fund AI boom

Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Blackstone (BX) are launching an artificial intelligence cloud company, the latest sign that Wall Street is getting deeper in the AI infrastructure race.

The joint venture will provide data center capacity, operations, networking, and Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as a compute-as-a-service offering.

The business will give customers another way to access Google’s TPUs, in a similar fashion to cloud provider CoreWeave (CRWV).

Blackstone said it will make an initial $5 billion equity investment through its funds. It expects the company’s first 500 megawatts of power to come online by 2027. Though precise figures aren't disclosed, Blackstone would be a majority shareholder, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The announcement is a major signal for how the hard assets that power AI’s computing needs are becoming a highly appealing investment for finance.

As of first quarter earnings, major tech firms expect to spend more than $700 billion this year on capital expenditures for the AI buildout. But that’s still not enough. Private asset manager Ares said in April that the opportunity in third-party data centers alone is estimated to be $900 billion.

For Blackstone, the deal marks its latest push into AI infrastructure.  In late April, Blackstone announced the formation of a new West Coast unit dedicated to investing in AI and other fast-emerging technologies.

Through its real estate and infrastructure equity funds, Blackstone already owns major North American data center company QTS. The firm also has significant holdings of AI names including Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), OpenAI, (OPAI.PVT), and SpaceX (SPAX.PVT), which owns xAI.

CEO Stephen Schwarzman said last month he believes his firm is “the largest investor in AI-related infrastructure in the world.”

Google has already inked a number of deals for companies to take advantage of its TPUs. Meta (META) reportedly signed a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar agreement to access the chips, according to The Information. Anthropic has also signed on to use Google’s processors.

The deal with Blackstone also highlights the growing competition between Nvidia and its hyperscaler customers, such as Google and Amazon (AMZN). Like Google, Amazon offers its custom Trainium chips for rent via its AWS service.

During the company’s latest earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy noted that Amazon’s chip business grew 40% quarter over quarter and that its annual revenue run rate exceeded $20 billion.

Jassy said that if the chips segment were a standalone business that sold processors to AWS and third-party customers, it would have a $50 billion run rate.