Google is moving to cut AI deals with Blackstone and KKR before OpenAI and Anthropic get there first

Sundar Pichai is not waiting for OpenAI and Anthropic to carve up the private equity market. Google is moving to get there at the same time.

Alphabet is in discussions with Blackstone, KKR and European private equity firm EQT to give the companies they own access to Google's artificial intelligence models, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified as the talks are confidential. The discussions are not exclusive and no deals have been finalized. Representatives for Blackstone, KKR, EQT and Google all declined to comment.

The talks come as the AI industry's biggest players race to lock in enterprise distribution through a channel that none of them has historically served: the thousands of mid-market and large companies sitting inside private equity portfolios. Blackstone alone manages more than $1 trillion in assets and owns stakes in more than 200 companies globally. KKR and EQT together control hundreds more. For Google, winning omnibus agreements with two or three major buyout firms at once would hand it access to a swath of enterprise customers that its direct sales force has never had easy reach to.

Alphabet's Google Cloud head Karthik Narain made the logic explicit after the firm struck an earlier deal with Vista Equity Partners in April. "Honestly speaking, even Google does not have those customers," he said. "The bigger technology companies have ignored that customer base."

The Google approach differs structurally from what OpenAI and Anthropic are building. On May 4, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI raised more than $4 billion from TPG, Brookfield Asset Management, Advent International and Bain Capital to form a consultancy that will help businesses adopt its AI software. The following day, Anthropic announced it was forming a similar company with Blackstone, Hellman and Friedman, and Goldman Sachs. Both models involve building a separate consulting business that hires engineers, handles integration contracts and creates an ongoing revenue stream directly tied to AI adoption inside portfolio companies. Those contracts are expected to range from $1 million to $10 million each, with the consultancies potentially growing to hundreds of employees.

Google's structure is different. Rather than building a joint consulting venture, Alphabet is negotiating omnibus licensing agreements that give an entire PE firm's portfolio access to Google's Gemini models and AI tools under a single arrangement. The model trades ongoing consulting revenue for broader, faster distribution. It is a technology company's answer to a consultancy play, prioritizing scale over services margin.

The competitive dynamics are fluid enough that some firms are hedging across all three AI providers. Blackstone, which is in talks with Google, also partnered with Anthropic on the new consulting venture announced this week. Thoma Bravo managing partner Seth Boro said his firm moved quickly on the Google Cloud deal but described its broader approach as model agnostic. "We have great relationships with OpenAI, with Anthropic," he said. "We have ongoing discussions all the time."

The urgency behind the deals is also coming from the private equity side. Software companies have been among the hardest-hit stocks in the AI disruption era, with buyout firms exposed to large technology portfolios under pressure to demonstrate their holdings are AI-ready rather than AI-threatened. Weaving AI tools into portfolio companies is no longer a future consideration for PE managers. It is an active portfolio defense strategy.

Pichai has positioned Google's enterprise push as one of the company's most important growth priorities in 2026. The talks with Blackstone, KKR and EQT, if they produce deals, would open the largest single new customer channel in Alphabet's history since the launch of Google Cloud itself.