Blackstone established a joint venture with Google to create a new U.S.-based cloud platform offering Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), an offering that will enable customers to access the TPUs as a compute-as-a-service offering via a platform other than Google Cloud (GCP).

Blackstone will invest $5 billion in equity capital from its funds into the venture, and the two aim to bring 500 megawatts (MW) of capacity online in 2027 with plans to expand over time. Google will supply the hardware, TPUs, software, and services.

Benjamin Treynor Sloss was named CEO of the venture, having worked at Google for more than two decades, most recently as the company's chief programs officer.

“We see a generational opportunity to invest capital at scale, building AI infrastructure," Blackstone COO Jon Gray noted. "This new company has enormous potential as it helps to meet the unprecedented demand for compute. We are incredibly proud to partner with Google – bringing together their world class TPUs and AI capabilities with Blackstone’s exceptional strength in energy and digital infrastructure.”

“This joint venture with Blackstone helps meet growing demand for TPUs, which are optimized specifically for efficiency and performance in the AI era," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian added. "Together, we’re accelerating AI transformation and providing more options for organizations to access accelerated compute capability.”

Google revealed plans to start offering its TPUs outside of GCP during its latest earnings call. CEO Sundar Pichai at that time said that they would "begin to deliver TPUs to a select group of customers in their own data centers in the hardware configuration to expand our addressable market opportunity."

Google did not reveal which companies would fall into the "select group of customers," but later several neoclouds, including Nebius, Lambda, and CoreWeave, said they had no immediate plans to adopt the chips.

Blackstone revealed last month that it was planning to take its newly formed data center real estate investment trust (REIT) public. The unit will be focused on acquiring and owning stabilized, newly-constructed data centers, mostly in tier-one markets in North America.

The investor has a number of large-scale data center investments. It owns QTS and AirTrunk, and has stakes in Vnet, Lumina CloudInfra, Copeland, Park Place Technologies, and Winthrop Technologies, as well as a number of joint ventures with COPT, Digital Realty, and others. It recently took a large minority stake in U.S. data center firm Rowan.

Blackstone last month announced its N1 (BXN1) dedicated AI investment unit, which is led by Jas Khaira. Commenting on the new joint venture with Google, Khaira said: "Capital alone doesn’t build category-defining platforms – the right partner, the right structure, and the conviction to underwrite singular opportunities do. Google’s TPUs, a decade in the making and foundational to the AI economy, are exactly the kind of platform BXN1 was built to back.”