Blackstone to Invest $5 Billion in AI Infrastructure Venture with Google

-based artificial intelligence infrastructure company in partnership with Google. The new company will receive Google tensor processing units, chips designed specifically for AI computations. The first 500 megawatts of compute capacity are scheduled to come online by 2027, with plans to scale over time.

Blackstone, the world's largest private owner of data centers, will hold a majority stake in the venture, according to The Wall Street Journal. 3 trillion in assets and has invested aggressively across the AI ecosystem. Benjamin Treynor Sloss, who most recently served as Google's chief programs officer, will lead the new company.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on whether Google would retain a direct leadership role. The joint venture has already identified likely data center locations, some of which are under construction.

Alphabet and Blackstone rose by about 1% in pre-market trading on Tuesday. The deal highlights the growing rivalry between Google and Nvidia in AI hardware. Google continues to use Nvidia GPUs across its cloud architecture while developing its own TPUs to reduce reliance on the industry leader.

Google manufactured its first TPU in 2015 and runs its Gemini AI model on the chips. Anthropic and Citadel Securities are among the current TPU users. Earlier this month, Blackstone established a similar venture with Anthropic.

“This new company has enormous potential as it helps to meet the unprecedented demand for compute.”