Blackstone President Jon Gray rejected billionaire Ken Griffin's claim that AI is a bubble, saying AI demand is growing parabolically and is fundamentally different from the 1990s telecom bubble; he also said Ode, an AI consulting firm co-founded by Blackstone and Anthropic, is seeing strong client demand.
Blackstone executive Jas Khaira said at TechCrunch Disrupt that market concerns over AI buildout debt are exaggerated. He outlined the firm's AI investment strategies, including loans to data centers and investments in frontier models, and noted that Blackstone is the largest owner of compute outside hyperscalers. Its subsidiary BXN1 has participated in compute-related investments including Crux AI and Etched.
A 10-bank consortium is arranging a $22 billion chip loan to support Crux AI, a cloud computing venture by Blackstone and Alphabet, for purchasing Google's TPU chips, backed by chip value and customer contracts.
According to The Information, Blackstone is expected to purchase far more Google TPUs than the scale disclosed when it announced a joint venture with Google in May 2026, seeking additional volumes several times its earlier plan. Blackstone declined to comment on specific figures.