Blackstone's Jas Khaira Says Fears Over AI-Buildout Debt Are Overblown
Private equity giant Blackstone is positioning itself at the center of the AI boom, firm veteran Jas Khaira said last week on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Betting Big Across the AI Stack
The firm is writing checks through a range of strategies—from extending massive loans to data centers to investing in frontier AI models and applications. Earlier this year, Blackstone launched Blackstone N1 (BXN1), a San Francisco–based central hub for its AI initiatives. The group is led by Khaira, who relocated from New York to be closer to the epicenter of AI.
Unlike earlier tech cycles such as mobile or SaaS—which allowed companies to reach significant scale with moderate capital—the transition to AI demands staggering amounts of investment. That capital intensity is precisely why Blackstone, with $1.3 trillion in assets under management, could play such a critical role in this tech shift.
A Different Kind of Investor
Khaira emphasized that Blackstone sets itself apart from traditional venture capitalists through its focus on compute financing and its ability to offer flexible capital structures spanning debt to equity. And the firm has been investing aggressively.
"We're the largest owner of compute outside of the hyperscalers today, whether it's investments in neo clouds, investments in data centers, and being able to use that compute strategically to support companies," Khaira said.
BXN1 has already played a key role in several compute-related deals. Among them is Crux AI, a neocloud launched in partnership with Google to commercialize its custom TPUs, to which Blackstone committed $5 billion as an investor. The firm also backed Etched, a four-year-old chip startup whose rapid development has caught investor attention. (Neoclouds are cloud providers that rent out AI GPU infrastructure.)
Pioneering GPU-Backed Lending
Blackstone pioneered a financing structure that allows it to lend massive sums to venture-backed neoclouds by analyzing both committed customer contracts and GPUs pledged as collateral.
The firm's first such deal came in 2023 with CoreWeave, shortly after that neocloud saw demand explode following the launch of ChatGPT. Despite having only "$30 million of revenue and minimal profitability" at the time, according to Khaira, CoreWeave approached Blackstone for a $2.3 billion loan.
CoreWeave was borrowing against the considerable value of its large collection of Nvidia GPUs, with Nvidia also an investor. Blackstone grew more comfortable with the loan because CoreWeave held contracts with blue-chip customers like Microsoft, making its revenue growth appear guaranteed.
That transaction quickly became the financing model for how Blackstone and other credit institutions provided billions in follow-on debt to CoreWeave and rival neoclouds.
"One of the primary things that we're looking to is the nature of the customer. And if the customer is an investment-grade customer—let's say it's Microsoft or let's say it's Meta—the risk gets priced relative to that customer," Khaira said.
Expanding the Playbook
Building on its success with CoreWeave, Blackstone struck other neocloud financing deals, including co-leading alongside Coatue a $10 billion financing for Firmus aimed at scaling energy-efficient AI infrastructure.
As AI capital expenditures continue to climb in 2026—with hyperscalers and neoclouds alike racing to secure compute, power, and data center capacity—Khaira's message is clear: the debt underpinning this buildout is structured around investment-grade customers and hard assets, not speculation. Whether that argument holds will depend on how quickly those contracted revenues materialize as the AI buildout matures.
via TechCrunch AI