Blackstone is placing itself at the heart of the AI boom, backing everything from data center loans to frontier models, firm veteran Jas Khaira said at TechCrunch Disrupt. Khaira leads Blackstone N1, the firm’s San Francisco-based AI hub established this year.
Khaira said AI requires far more capital than earlier tech cycles, giving Blackstone, with $1.3 trillion in assets under management, a key role. He described the firm as the largest owner of compute outside the hyperscalers, citing deals including a $5 billion commitment to Crux AI, a neocloud built with Google around its TPUs, and an investment in chip startup Etched.
Blackstone pioneered lending to neoclouds against GPUs and customer contracts, starting with a $2.3 billion loan to CoreWeave in 2023, and later co-led a $10 billion facility for Firmus. Khaira acknowledged rising interest rates, wider credit spreads and heavy debt loads have rattled markets, with CoreWeave shares falling and Firmus cancelling its IPO. He nonetheless dismissed comparisons to 2008, noting most data center debt is backed by highly creditworthy hyperscalers.
Blackstone is also driving AI adoption through Ode with Anthropic, a $1.5 billion joint venture with Anthropic and Hellman & Friedman. Khaira said returns from AI are real but uneven.
