Google and Blackstone Launch $5 Billion AI Cloud Venture

Google and global investment firm Blackstone have teamed up to form a new artificial intelligence cloud computing company, marking a significant push into the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market. The venture, which will be announced later this week, is backed by a $5 billion equity investment from Blackstone, giving it majority ownership of the unnamed U.S.-based entity.

The company aims to deploy 500 megawatts of computing capacity by 2027—a figure equivalent to powering a midsize city—and plans to scale far beyond that in the coming years. Google will provide the hardware, including its specialized Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), as well as the software and services needed to operate the AI cloud platform. Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a long-time Google executive, will serve as the company’s chief executive officer.

This partnership represents Google’s most ambitious effort yet to commercialize and monetize its AI chips for external customers. The move directly challenges Nvidia, which currently dominates the AI computing infrastructure market. With demand for massive computational power to train and run advanced AI models hitting record levels, major AI firms like OpenAI and others are increasingly reliant on providers such as CoreWeave, who primarily use Nvidia’s hardware.

The new venture positions Google and Blackstone to capture a significant share of this booming market while allowing Blackstone—already one of the world’s largest investors in data centers—to deepen its presence in AI infrastructure. As the industry continues to evolve, this collaboration signals a strategic shift for both companies, aiming to carve out a niche in an increasingly competitive landscape.