In a startling sign of how AI is reshaping the global-business landscape, one of the world’s leading digital natives, Google Cloud, has paired up with industrial-sector powerhouse Baker Hughes to optimize power generation and consumption for AI data centers.
So just who is this gritty century-old rust-and-dust and oil-and-toil company picked by Google Cloud — not only one of the world’s iconic AI, software, and digital corporations but also the #1 company on my Cloud Wars Top 10 weekly rankings — to create entirely new ways of generating unprecedented volumes of energy and power required for the nascent AI economy?
Here’s how Baker Hughes describes itself:
“With a 100-year heritage of energy innovation, Baker Hughes is integrating digital solutions with the company’s proven turbomachinery technologies and power management systems to help customers achieve greater efficiency, extend asset life, and maximize returns….
“Baker Hughes is an energy technology company that provides solutions to energy and industrial customers worldwide. Built on a century of experience and conducting business in over 120 countries, our innovative technologies and services are taking energy forward – making it safer, cleaner and more efficient for people and the planet.”
Google Cloud and the 48% revenue growth it posted last quarter are major players in the intense and mind-bogglingly expensive race to build the physical/digital infrastructure powerhouses for the AI Economy. As is the case with fellow hyperscalers Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon, Google Cloud has been unable to keep up with customer demand for its cloud and AI services despite the combined $645-billion CapEx commitment of those four companies for calendar 2026 alone.
That $645 billion — and there’s not a reason in the world to think that number won’t be even bigger in 2027 — is being plowed into AI data centers across the U.S. and around the world as those facilities become the steel-and-concrete factories powering the ones-and-zeroes AI phenomenon.
And that means the massive gulf that heretofore existed between old-school heavy-industry Rust Belt [please insert your own additional descriptors here] companies like Baker Hughes and new-age digital powerhouses like Google Cloud — whose primary raw materials did not extend far beyond electrons, computers, and coffee — is being filled in with one of the biggest opportunities in human history.
As someone who grew up in the so-called Rust Belt and is a huge fan of industrial and manufacturing companies and their vast know-how, I am beyond thrilled to see this new marriage of the old and the new because together they can achieve extraordinary things that neither could even dream about individually.
From the Baker Hughes press release:
The companies will explore opportunities within data centers to unlock greater value from underutilized industrial and operational data. In addition, Baker Hughes will identify new pathways for efficient, optimized power use through Baker Hughes’ deep domain expertise in optimizing turbomachinery and power systems performance, alongside Google Cloud’s AI and data analytics. Baker Hughes will leverage Google Cloud and its broad ecosystem of digital partners to provide these AI-driven solutions at enterprise scale.
“Infrastructure that powers the growing demand for AI and cloud computing is becoming one of the most critical drivers of global electricity needs,” said Baker Hughes Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli. “Through this partnership with Google Cloud, we are bringing together world-class power technologies and digital capabilities to help data center operators improve efficiency, enhance reliability, and accelerate progress toward lower carbon operations. This collaboration reinforces Baker Hughes’ role as an integrated partner for power generation, infrastructure and management in this fast-growing sector.”
“Baker Hughes is bringing its proprietary energy technology and expertise, and Google Cloud is providing the advanced AI to help deliver these critical solutions,” said Matt Renner, president and chief revenue officer, Google Cloud. “By combining our AI with their century of leadership in industrial energy systems, Baker Hughes is helping companies create more efficient data centers for the future.”
Final Thought
This is yet another step by fast-growing Google Cloud to control its own energy and power destiny via this ground-breaking partnership with Baker Hughes, whose 2025 revenue totaled $27.7 billion and has a market cap of about $63.3 billion.
Earlier this year, Google Cloud acquired energy company Intercept, which I analyzed in a piece headlined “The AI Economy Is Here: NVIDIA Powers Mercedes-Benz, Google Acquires Energy Firm.”
To all business executives: are you locked into the mindsets and limited vision of the past, or are you imagining a future in which self-imposed limitations are being swept aside in favor of bold new approaches to growth and innovation?
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