Google Is Exploring Ways to Use Its Financial Might to Take On Nvidia

Google is exploring new ways to expand the market for its artificial-intelligence chips, seeking to use its financial might to build a broader AI ecosystem that can better compete with market leader Nvidia. The company’s chips are gaining wider adoption for AI workloads, including with startups such as Anthropic, but Google is dealing with myriad challenges as it seeks to grow. The issues include bottlenecks at manufacturing partners and limited interest from cloud-computing rivals that are among the largest buyers of Nvidia processors, according to people familiar with the matter. To expand its potential market, Google is increasing its financial support to a network of data-center partners that can provide computing power to a broader swath of customers, people familiar with its plans said. The company is in talks to invest around $100 million in cloud-computing startup Fluidstack, part of a deal that values it at around $7.5 billion, people familiar with the discussions said. Fluidstack is one of a growing number of so-called “neocloud” companies that offer computing services to AI companies and others. CoreWeave, one of the biggest such neocloud operators, provides access to graphics processing units, or GPUs, mostly from Nvidia. Google wants to help amplify the growth potential of Fluidstack and to encourage more computing providers to use its AI chips, people familiar with its plans said. Google’s AI chips are called tensor processing units, or TPUs. Google has also held discussions about expanding its financial commitments to other data-center partners that could lead to additional TPU demand, people familiar with the talks said. Google has backstopped financing for projects involving Hut 8, Cipher Mining and TeraWulf, which are former crypto-mining companies that are now developing data centers. Cipher Mining declined to comment. Hut8 and TeraWulf didn’t respond to requests for comment. Some managers at Google’s cloud-computing division recently refreshed a longstanding internal debate about restructuring the TPU team into a stand-alone unit, people familiar with those discussions said. Such a plan could potentially allow Google to expand its opportunities to invest, including with outside capital. Read More [https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-is-exploring-ways-to-use-its-financial-might-to-take-on-nvidia-0fbadc84](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-is-exploring-ways-to-use-its-financial-might-to-take-on-nvidia-0fbadc84)