Google’s parent company alphabet announced Monday that it will acquire Intersect, a data center and energy infrastructure company, for $4.75 billion in cash, in addition to assuming debt.
Alphabet said Intersect’s operations will remain independent, but the acquisition will allow it to bring more data centers and power generation capacity online more quickly.
In recent years, Google has been embroiled in fierce competition from artificial intelligence rival OpenAI. OpenAI launched the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, sparking the generative AI boom. OpenAI is committing more than $1.4 trillion in infrastructure to build out the data centers needed to meet growing demand for its technology.
Google aims to catch up with this by acquiring Intersect.
“Intersect will help us expand capacity, run new power plants more agilely to match new data center loads, and reimagine energy solutions to drive American innovation and leadership,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
Google already had a minority stake in Intersect in a funding round announced last December. Intersect said in a release at the time that its strategic partnership with Google and TPG Rise Climate is aimed at developing gigawatts of data center capacity across the United States, including $20 billion in investments in renewable power infrastructure by the end of the decade.
Alphabet announced Monday that Intersect will work closely with Google’s technology infrastructure team, including the companies’ jointly located power plant and data center in Haskell County, Texas. Google previously announced a $40 billion investment in Texas through 2027, including new data center campuses in the state’s Haskell and Armstrong counties.
Alphabet said Intersect’s operating and developing assets in California and existing operating assets in Texas are not part of the acquisition. Intersect’s existing investors, including TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners, will support these assets and continue to operate them as independent companies.
Alphabet’s acquisition of Intersect is expected to close in the first half of 2026 and remains subject to customary closing conditions.
Attention: What are the electricity costs in the states with the most data centers?
