Locator: 50835GOOG.
"You can howl at the wind, but AI is not going away." -- Amazon CEO Andy Jesse.
From the linked article:
Alphabet’s Google and Blackstone plan to create an artificial-intelligence cloud company to rival the likes of CoreWeave using Google’s specialized chips, according to people familiar with the matter.
The duo plans to launch the unnamed U.S. company with $5 billion in equity capital from Blackstone, which will be the majority owner, the people said. The deal is set to be announced later Monday.
The venture, the biggest attempt yet by Google to sell and monetize its own chips to external parties, will sharpen a rivalry with Nvidia, the market leader in AI computing.
The new company aims in 2027 to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online—roughly the same amount of electric power required to serve a midsize city—and substantially increase capacity over time, the people familiar with the matter said.
The companies are forming the venture as demand for computing power to train and run advanced AI models reaches unprecedented levels. Most of the major AI companies currently rely, at least in part, on computing infrastructure from CoreWeave, which uses Nvidia’s chips. A class of smaller so-called neocloud companies have also cropped up in response to ravenous demand.
Google last month introduced a new processor that is customized for AI inference, or the computing required to run models rather than train them. Demand for that type of processing has exploded as businesses embrace AI. Google also introduced a new version of its chips that is specially designed for training models.
Google will supply hardware—including its specialized chips known as Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs—as well as software and services to the venture, the people said. Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a longtime Google executive, will serve as the new company’s CEO.
Google and Blackstone have identified data centers that will likely be part of the venture, some of which are in the process of being built.
Industry observers have wondered for years whether Google will commercialize its TPUs for widespread use. The technology giant has signed two major deals with outsiders: one to give Claude-maker Anthropic access to about one million of its chips, and another with Facebook owner Meta Platforms.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply content on Google platforms.
