According to DCD, Google’s parent company Alphabet is set to acquire the energy and data center infrastructure developer Intersect Power for $4.75 billion. The deal, announced by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, will see Alphabet purchase Intersect’s entire portfolio of in-development and under-construction assets, which amount to several gigawatts of energy and data center projects. However, Intersect’s existing operating assets in Texas and California are not part of the acquisition and will remain a separate entity. Intersect CEO Sheldon Kimber will stay on to lead the company, which will partner with Google’s infrastructure team on projects like a colocated data center and energy site in Haskell County, Texas. This follows a partnership struck last year where Intersect, which has 2.2GW of solar and 2.4GWh of battery storage, agreed to build clean energy assets with Google as the primary customer.
The AI Power Crunch Is Real
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just another corporate acquisition. This is a survival move. Google, along with every other hyperscaler, is staring down a fundamental problem. You can’t run the AI models of the future, or even the present, without absolutely massive amounts of electricity. And you can’t just hope the local grid has it when you need it. The traditional model of building a data center and then signing a power purchase agreement (PPA) with a distant wind farm isn’t nimble or reliable enough anymore. This deal is Google saying, “We need to control our destiny.” By buying the developer, they’re not just buying power; they’re buying the capability to build generation in lockstep with new data centers. That’s a huge shift.
More Than Just Megawatts
But look, it’s also about the data center projects themselves. This isn’t a pure energy play. Intersect is a developer of colocated industrial parks—places where power generation, battery storage, and data centers are built together from the ground up. That’s the real prize. It creates an optimized, efficient ecosystem where energy doesn’t travel far and waste heat can potentially be reused. For a company like Google, which needs both compute and power at a scale that’s hard to comprehend, this integrated approach is probably the only way forward. It’s a blueprint for the AI industrial complex.
A New Era of Vertical Integration
So what does this mean for the industry? Basically, we’re watching the hyperscalers vertically integrate into energy production. Microsoft is doing it with nuclear. Amazon is doing it with renewables. Now Google is buying the whole shop. This trend is going to accelerate, and it raises big questions. Will these tech giants become the de facto utilities of the 21st century? And what happens to the traditional energy developers? They either get bought, or they become direct competitors to some of the richest companies on Earth. For businesses that rely on robust, industrial-grade computing at the edge—like those using top-tier hardware from suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs—this push for stable, scalable power is ultimately good news. It means the foundational infrastructure their operations depend on is being fortified, albeit by an unlikely set of players.
The Big Picture
Kimber’s quote is telling: “Modern infrastructure is the linchpin of American competitiveness in AI.” He’s right. This deal isn’t really about green energy or carbon goals, though those are nice side benefits. This is about geopolitical and economic competition. The US and China are in a race for AI supremacy, and that race is powered by electricity and silicon. Google is making a $4.75 billion bet that the winner will be the one who best masters the physical, gritty world of gigawatts and construction schedules, not just the digital world of algorithms. It’s a fascinating, and perhaps inevitable, convergence of tech and heavy industry.
