Google And Blackstone JV Faces Delays On Data Center Projects

Google and Blackstone’s joint venture is facing delays at several data center projects across the US, although the partnership remains optimistic about its progress. Known internally as Project Braid, the JV was formed in May 2026 to develop a cloud platform powered by Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). Blackstone committed $5 billion in equity, with the partners targeting 500MW of capacity by 2027 and plans for further expansion.

One delayed project is a data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, originally pursued by Crusoe as a 1.8GW campus with potential to scale to 10GW. Crusoe paused work in June at the customer’s request, before Google took over the project the following month. Another site was deemed unsuitable due to incompatible transformers, while Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s freeze on new data center projects has also created obstacles.

Despite this, Benjamin Treynor Sloss, the CEO of the JV, said: "We are making strong progress building out our infrastructure and are fully on track to deliver on our 500MW target in 2027. Given higher-than-expected demand for our compute capacity, we are actively expanding our pipeline to evaluate a broader pool of sites to support our long-term scaling plans. It is very common for individual potential sites to progress at different rates and we had always factored that into our planning, which is why we have a diversified set of options.”