Blackstone and Google form U.S. joint venture to sell Google TPUs as cloud service with $5 billion backing

Blackstone and Google said Monday they are forming a new U.S.-based company to build a cloud service around Google’s Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, in a major expansion of commercial access to Google’s custom AI chips beyond Google’s own cloud business.

According to Blackstone’s press release and a Google company blog post published May 18, Blackstone is making an initial $5 billion equity commitment to the joint venture. The companies said the new business expects to bring its first 500 megawatts of capacity online in 2027 and plans to scale over time.

The company will offer data center capacity, operations, networking and Google Cloud’s TPUs as a compute-as-a-service product, according to the announcement materials. Google will supply hardware, including TPUs, as well as software and services to the new company.

Benjamin Treynor Sloss will serve as chief executive of the venture. Blackstone described him as a Google executive with more than two decades of experience building and operating Google’s global infrastructure.

The announcement is significant because TPUs are Google-designed AI accelerators used to train and run large AI models. By putting those chips into a separately financed U.S. cloud company, Google is widening the ways customers can buy TPU-based computing power at a time of intense demand for AI infrastructure.

The move also fits a broader push by Google to commercialize its in-house AI hardware more broadly. At Google Cloud Next in April, the company introduced its eighth-generation TPU family. In Alphabet’s first-quarter 2026 earnings commentary, management said Google would begin delivering TPUs to a select group of external customers for installation in their own data centers. The Blackstone venture adds another channel for organizations seeking access to TPU-based compute.

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

Blackstone said in its release that it has more than $1.3 trillion in assets under management and described itself as the largest global provider of data centers, helping explain its role as the financing and infrastructure partner in the deal.

The companies did not disclose ownership percentages, board structure, site locations, pricing or specific customers in the materials announcing the venture.