Former Google Infrastructure VP Joined Crux AI
The veteran executive will help steer the joint venture's strategy to deploy 2GW of data center capacity.
Updated on Oct. 10, 2026 in Data Centers
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Bikash Koley has departed Google after a 16-year tenure to join Crux AI as chief technology and product officer. Crux AI, a joint venture between Blackstone and Google, is currently assembling engineering leadership to build out its data center operations.
Why it matters
The hire signals an aggressive expansion phase for the Blackstone and Google joint venture, which is recruiting talent from major cloud providers to scale its infrastructure. The firm aims to build significant capacity to support high-performance computing workloads.
Crux AI has set an initial target of 500MW of data center capacity for 2027, with a long-term goal of reaching 2GW. The venture plans to utilize Google TPU chips to power its underlying cloud operations.
The players
Bikash Koley
The new chief technology and product officer at Crux AI who previously spent 16 years at Google and held roles at Juniper Networks and Ciena.
Crux AI
A joint venture backed by Blackstone and Google focused on developing large-scale cloud and data center infrastructure.
Benjamin Treynor Sloss
The leader of Crux AI responsible for driving the firm's strategic growth and infrastructure development.
The details
Crux AI is building its stack around Google TPU chips — specialized hardware designed by Google to accelerate artificial intelligence training and inference tasks. The company is actively recruiting senior engineering talent from major tech firms, including a recent hire from Meta, to manage this infrastructure scale. Bikash Koley, formerly the vice president of global infrastructure and capacity at Google, will now oversee the venture's technical and product direction.
Timeline
September 2026: Crux AI hired Alan Duong from Meta.
October 2026: Bikash Koley left Google to join Crux AI.
2027: Crux AI expects to bring 500MW of capacity online.
The Tech Race
Crux AI is positioning itself within the competitive landscape of massive data center providers by leveraging Google's proprietary hardware ecosystem. This move marks an expansion of Google's TPU infrastructure strategy into a dedicated joint venture model.
The venture's rapid scaling will influence the availability of high-performance cloud resources for large-scale enterprise users. Readers should track Crux AI's progress toward its 500MW capacity milestone throughout 2027.
The takeaway
Crux AI is leveraging high-level executive talent to shift its operational capacity toward the 2GW scale. Watch for the 2027 milestone to confirm if the venture successfully deploys its initial 500MW of power as planned.
Further reading
For more on the evolving infrastructure landscape, see our coverage of Data Centers.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Datacenterdynamics.
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