Sept 16 (Reuters) – A group of 10 banks is providing a $22 billion chip loan to support Blackstone and Alphabet’s new cloud venture Crux AI, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The banks include Goldman Sachs Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, Barclays, BNP Paribas SA and Bank of Nova Scotia, the report said.
Google and Blackstone announced the venture in May, saying they would form a cloud business aimed at meeting growing demand for AI computing services.
Blackstone would invest an initial $5 billion in equity to help bring 500 megawatts of data center capacity online in 2027, with further expansion planned.
The venture comes as tech companies ramp up spending on data centers, power and specialized chips to support AI applications.
The debt will be used to purchase Google’s custom Tensor Processing Units, and will be backed by the value of those chips and Crux AI’s customer contracts, according to the report.
Blackstone, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, BNP, Barclays, Bank of Nova Scotia, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
