Blackstone is leaning into the AI buildout as both lender and investor. Jas Khaira, who leads the firm’s AI hub Blackstone N1, said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the firm is the largest owner of compute outside the hyperscalers, with positions in data centers, neoclouds, and frontier AI companies. With $1.3 trillion in assets, Blackstone can offer flexible capital structures, from debt to equity, that traditional VCs cannot.
Blackstone’s model was tested by its 2023 loan to CoreWeave, a neocloud with roughly $30 million in revenue at the time. Blackstone lent $2.3 billion against GPU collateral and contracts with customers like Microsoft. That deal became a template for the industry, but CoreWeave’s debt has since grown to about $50 billion, and rising interest rates and wider credit spreads have rattled markets. Firmus, another Blackstone-backed neocloud, pulled its planned IPO at a $30 billion valuation, and CoreWeave shares fell more than 20%.
Khaira argues the anxiety is overblown. Most data center debt is ultimately backed by investment-grade hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Meta, he said, not by shaky banks as in 2008. He also pointed to continued demand for compute, and Blackstone’s $1.5 billion joint venture with Anthropic to deploy AI across its portfolio companies. Still, he conceded that returns from AI adoption are real but uneven.