Crux AI

AI Infrastructure · Cloud Computing · Structured Finance

Funding

Crux AI reportedly lands $22B chip-backed loan from 10-bank consortium

Turning AI chips into loan collateral lets a young cloud venture borrow billions against hardware before it earns a dollar of revenue.

• Crux AI, the Blackstone-Alphabet cloud joint venture, reportedly secured a $22 billion loan from a consortium of 10 banks led by Goldman Sachs, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, Barclays, BNP Paribas and Bank of Nova Scotia, according to Bloomberg.
• Crux AI is a cloud infrastructure venture Google and Blackstone announced in May and formally launched last week, built to sell dedicated AI computing capacity to labs, enterprises and governments.
• The debt is secured by the value of Google's custom TPU chips plus Crux AI's customer contracts, with the banks also arranging a separate $1 billion revolving credit facility.
• The loan will fund purchases of Google's TPUs; Blackstone previously put in $5 billion of initial equity while Google contributes the chips, software and services.
• Crux AI plans to bring its first 500 megawatts of data center capacity online in 2027, and the banking group is syndicating the loan to bring in more lenders, with a possible later refinancing via investment-grade bonds.
• The deal shows lenders now treating AI chips and their attached customer contracts as bankable collateral, a structure that could unlock far larger debt financing for the AI buildout than equity alone could support.