Blackstone, the world’s largest private owner of data centers, will invest $5 billion in equity capital in a new artificial intelligence infrastructure company with Google, the New York-based asset management firm announced Monday.
Google will supply the new U.S.-based company with its tensor processing units — chips purpose-built for processing artificial intelligence computations — bringing the first 500 megawatts of compute capacity online by 2027, with “plans to scale significantly over time,” Blackstone said in a statement.
“This new company has enormous potential as it helps to meet the unprecedented demand for compute,” Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone, said in the statement.
The unnamed company will be helmed by Benjamin Treynor Sloss, who most recently served as Google’s chief programs officer. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on whether Google would retain a direct leadership role in it.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the joint venture before Blackstone’s official statement, said the private equity giant would hold a majority stake, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Blackstone did not disclose the venture’s ownership structure in its statement, and did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment by publication time.
The Journal also reported that the joint venture has already identified likely data center locations, some of which are under construction.
Blackstone, which manages more than $1.3 trillion in assets, has invested aggressively across the AI ecosystem and, earlier this month, established a similar venture with Anthropic.
Shares of Alphabet and Blackstone rose by about 1% in pre-market trading on Tuesday.
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