A report said a group of 10 banks is providing a US$22 billion loan to support Blackstone and Alphabet’s new cloud venture, Crux AI.

It plans to use the debt to buy Google tensor processing units, or TPUs, for AI.

The debt is backed by the chips and Crux AI’s customer contracts. Some banks are also providing a US$1 billion revolving credit facility, according to the report.

Crux AI has been described as a TPU neocloud, or a cloud infrastructure provider built around Google’s AI chips.

Google said TPUs are custom accelerators designed for machine learning workloads on Google Cloud.

The financing reflects a broader lending trend in AI infrastructure.

The report said debt deals for chips and servers are becoming more common, though most AI infrastructure borrowing so far has gone toward data centers.

Crux AI formally launched last week. The report also noted delays at major data center sites meant to run Google’s chips.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg