Blackstone, Google Join To Create U.S.-based Company To Meet Growing Demand For TPUs

(RTTNews) - Blackstone (BX) announced a joint venture with Google to create a new U.S.-based company that will offer efficient data center capacity, operations, networking, and Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units as a compute-as-a-service offering. Google's TPUs are custom chips purpose-built for AI, and optimized for training and inference of advanced AI models. The company will give customers another option to access cloud TPUs in addition to using them through Google Cloud. The company expects to bring the first 500 MW of capacity online in 2027, with plans to scale significantly over time. Blackstone has named Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a Google executive, to lead the new company as CEO.

Blackstone is making an initial commitment of $5 billion in equity capital from funds managed by Blackstone. Google will supply hardware, including TPUs, as well as software and services to the new company.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said: "This joint venture with Blackstone helps meet growing demand for TPUs, which are optimized specifically for efficiency and performance in the AI era."