Hyperscalers to shift AI financing off their balance sheet onto private equity backers?

Big Tech’s AI infra spend is expected to clear $700bn in 2026: Juniper Research distils possible implications of the Google, Blackstone JV to build AI infra in the US, at scale

On 18 May, Google and Blackstone announced a joint venture to create a new US-based company, reports Juniper Research. The new company will offer data centre capacity, operations, networking and Google Cloud’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as a Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering. 

Blackstone will contribute an initial $5 billion in equity capital; Google will provide the hardware, including its TPUs, which are custom chips purpose-built for AI. The joint venture expects to bring the first 500 megawatts (MW) of capacity online in 2027, with plans to scale – significantly – over time.

This is Juniper Research’s summary of why this could prove a highly significant development:

• The Google-Blackstone joint venture externalises hyperscaler capital expenditure (CapEx) to private capital for the first time at this scale, with Blackstone taking majority equity while Google retains the TPU supply relationship. Big Tech AI infrastructure spend is set to clear $700 billion in 2026; marking a structural shift where financing the physical layer of AI moves off hyperscaler balance sheets and into private equity-backed operating companies. It is likely that more hyperscalers will follow the same game plan. 

• TPU CaaS to rival NVIDIA’s graphics processing unit (GPU) dominance for the first time, as CoreWeave – a specialised cloud provider of high-performance GPU infrastructure – fell more than 10% on the announcement of the joint venture. The broader neocloud category could face margin pressure as a non-NVIDIA accelerator alternative becomes commercially available outside Google Cloud itself.

• NVIDIA’s export controls are squeezing GPU access across Southeast Asia and the Gulf. As a result, a commercially available TPU platform could become a meaningful alternative for markets that are hungry for AI compute but locked out of the supply chain. A TPU-native CaaS offering, backed by Blackstone’s capital and Google’s silicon stack, could represent a credible alternative procurement pathway. However, the current US-only framing could limit this opportunity for the joint venture in the near term. The question is whether Google is willing to internationalise TPU access. 

Mobile Europe wonders why it wouldn’t?