Crux AI Launches with $5B Blackstone Bet, Hires Meta Vet Alan Duong

Google and Blackstone have partnered to launch Crux AI, a joint venture that will offer Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as a cloud service outside of the standard Google Cloud platform. The venture has hired Alan Duong, Meta's former vice president and head of data center engineering and construction, as its chief development officer.

Crux AI aims to bring 500MW of capacity online in 2027, with plans to expand to 2GW overall. This is a significant investment, with Blackstone committing $5 billion in equity capital from its funds. The venture's internal codename is 'Project Braid', and it will focus on providing TPU-based compute capacity to enterprise and AI customers.

The hiring of Duong is seen as a major coup for Crux AI, given his experience in building large-scale data centers under AI-era power and timeline pressure. His departure from Meta is notable, as the company has been reorienting its infrastructure roadmap around AI, including the ramp of its in-house Iris AI chip program.