Google and Blackstone announce they will form an artificial intelligence cloud business venture to expand access to AI computing capacity. The venture is designed to meet rising demand from organisations seeking compute resources, particularly for workloads that run on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs). Under the plan, Blackstone will commit an initial $5 billion in equity and is set to hold a majority ownership stake in the new U.S. company, according to reports quoting the companies’ statements. The venture will build and operate data centre capacity, with sources specifying an initial target of 500 megawatts of data centre capacity. Google Cloud’s leadership says the initiative will provide additional ways for customers to access TPU-based computing. Multiple outlets describe the offering as “compute-as-a-service,” combining data centre capacity, operations and networking with access to Google’s AI hardware and cloud infrastructure. Several reports frame the move as an effort to compete with other AI infrastructure providers in a fast-growing market that includes firms such as CoreWeave. Financial terms and company details beyond the initial equity and capacity targets are not fully detailed in the reports provided.