Ten banks pledge $22 billion loan to fund Blackstone-Alphabet AI cloud venture

Ten major banks have agreed to extend a $22 billion loan to support Crux AI, the cloud computing venture launched by Blackstone and Alphabet in May. The lenders, among them Goldman Sachs Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, Barclays, BNP Paribas SA and Bank of Nova Scotia, will fund the acquisition of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Units for the new service. Blackstone will initially invest $5 billion in equity, aiming to bring 500 megawatts of AI-optimized data centre capacity online by 2027, with additional expansion planned thereafter.

The loan is collateralised by the value of the chips and the venture’s customer contracts. The financing reflects the broader industry push to expand data centre power and specialised hardware for AI workloads. Neither Blackstone, Alphabet nor the participating banks have responded to requests for comment.