Nvidia's iron grip on AI chips is so tight that even Google's TPUs can't find renters among the usual cloud upstarts. So Google is building its own cloud company — with a $5 billion check from Blackstone.
In a project codenamed Project Braid, Blackstone is putting up $5 billion in equity to launch a standalone cloud computing company that will exclusively rent out Google's TPU chips to AI developers. Google will be a minority shareholder, providing the TPU hardware.
Google has been trying to expand TPU rental to rival Nvidia, but most emerging cloud providers — the so-called 'neoclouds' — have refused to take on Google's TPUs, fearing Nvidia's control over chip allocations.
By spinning out a separate company backed by Blackstone's capital, Google can bypass Nvidia's ecosystem entirely and force open a rental channel for TPUs.
The new venture will be led by Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a longtime Google Cloud executive. It plans to bring 500 megawatts of TPU compute capacity online by 2027.