Google and Blackstone, which invests in early-stage companies,
will form a joint venture to create an artificial intelligence (AI) cloud company, backed by an initial $5 billion equity commitment. The goal is to provide customers with more flexibility for running
AI workloads on Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
This partnership combines Google's advanced AI compute technology with Blackstone's expertise in digital
infrastructure to help meet surging global demand for advanced AI workloads, the companies announced.
“We see a generational opportunity to invest capital at scale building AI
infrastructure," stated Jon Gray, president and COO at Blackstone.
"This new company has enormous potential as it helps to meet the unprecedented demand for compute," Gray added that the
company is proud to partner with Google and combine its "TPUs and AI capabilities with Blackstone’s exceptional strength in energy and digital infrastructure.”
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Blackstone will
initially invest $5 billion in equity to bring an expected 500MW of capacity online in 2027.
Google will supply hardware -- including TPUs as well as software and services to the new
company -- so it can rapidly accelerate to meet the growing demand for accelerated computing, leveraging the benefit of Google’s technical and domain expertise.
Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a Google executive with more than two decades
of experience building and operating Google’s global infrastructure and operations, will lead the new company as CEO.
“This joint
venture with Blackstone helps meet growing demand for TPUs, which are optimized specifically for efficiency and performance in the AI era," stated Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. "Together,
we’re accelerating AI transformation and providing more options for organizations to access accelerated compute capability.”
The announcement centers on raw computing infrastructure as a service, but benefits for advertisers are seen as directly having the ability to optimize AI-dependent ad systems.
The massive scale of the project will provide support for sudden traffic spikes, which broadcast networks may experience while running campaigns during running the Super Bowl, for example.