Alphabet venture Crux AI gets $22B bank financing for TPUs

A 10-bank consortium is providing a $22 billion loan to fund Crux AI, an artificial intelligence cloud venture formed by Alphabet and Blackstone, according to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday, 16 September 2026. Participating banks are also offering a separate $1 billion revolving credit line that may later be refinanced in the corporate bond market.

The financing group includes Goldman Sachs, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Barclays, BNP Paribas, and Bank of Nova Scotia. The group is working to syndicate part of the debt to other institutions. The $22 billion loan is secured directly by Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and Crux AI customer agreements.

Crux AI, which operated under the internal code name Project Braid, is backed by an initial $5 billion equity investment from Blackstone. The venture plans to bring 500 megawatts of computing capacity online by 2027 using Google TPUs to serve top AI research labs, competing with neocloud providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius Group. The venture has faced early delays in securing primary data center sites to host the chips.

In after-hours trading on Wednesday following the news, Alphabet shares rose 0.2%, while Blackstone stock slipped 0.2%. Year-to-date, Alphabet shares are up 10%, while Blackstone has declined about 21%.