Google and Blackstone will establish an AI cloud joint venture using Google's own chips, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 18.
Blackstone will hold a majority stake in the joint venture.
The venture is Google's biggest attempt so far to sell and monetise its in-house chips externally.
The joint venture aims to run 500 megawatts of capacity in 2027. That is similar to the amount of power supplied to a small to mid-sized city. The joint venture plans to sharply expand capacity after that.
Google will supply the joint venture with hardware as well as software and services, including its TPU chips. Google last month unveiled a new processor specialised in AI inference. Earlier, Google signed deals to provide large amounts of TPUs to Anthropic and Meta.
Blackstone acquired data centre operator QTS Realty Trust in 2021 and agreed to acquire AirTrunk in 2024. It also made large investments in AI-related companies including CoreWeave, Anthropic and OpenAI. Blackstone recently set up a new division, Blackstone N1 (BXN1), to manage AI investments and appointed Jass Kaira (자스 카이라), who led the CoreWeave investment, as global head.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr