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California Data Center Intel
Latest data center news, projects, power and policy across California — updated daily.
Recent California data center news
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21 Investments, 100+ Hires, 53 Podcast Episodes: MCJ’s 2025 Impact
MCJ has recapped its 2025 impact, highlighting 21 climate-focused investments, over $15M deployed, 100+ hires across portfolio companies, and 53 episodes of its Inevitable climate and energy podcast.
- Impact and activities: MCJ made 21 investments (13 new portfolio companies) and deployed over $15M into companies in clean energy, abundance, infrastructure resilience, and new industrialism; it organized an “Energy + AI” event in Austin, TX, recorded a live Inevitable episode with Crusoe COO Cully Cavness, and its team members engaged in activities such as teaching impact investing at UCLA Anderson and touring leading cleantech companies in China.
- Media and content highlights: MCJ produced 53 podcast episodes including popular shows featuring Tom Steyer (Galvanize), Brandon Middaugh (Microsoft’s $1B Climate Innovation Fund), Hannan Happi (Exowatt) on thermal energy storage for AI data centers, Cully Cavness (Crusoe) on hyperscale AI data centers and the $500B Project Stargate, and Dr. Mark Jacobson (Stanford) on 100% renewables; the newsletter also promoted top 2025 climate articles on energy scarcity, Canada as a launchpad for U.S. climate and energy innovation, nature vs. climate framing, AI + quantum (AQ), and cold chain climate innovation, and invited readers to submit climate-related events/content to info@mcj.vc and content@mcj.vc or apply to join MCJ Collective.
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Google Parent $3.7 Trillion Alphabet with Minority Stake to Buyout United States $15 Billion Data Center Intersect at $4.75 Billion Valuation (Cash + Assume All Debt) Excluding Operating Assets in Texas and Operating & in-Development Assets in California (Supported by Existing Investors TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure & Greenbelt Capital Partners), Intersect Founded in 2016 by Sheldon Kimber
Alphabet has announced a minority-stake buyout of U.S. data center owner Intersect.
- Main announcement:Alphabet (parent of Google) will acquire a minority stake in Intersect at a $4.75 billion valuation (Cash + assume all debt); the deal excludes Intersect’s operating assets in Texas and operating & in-development assets in California.
- Background and details:Intersect was founded in 2016 by Sheldon Kimber and states it has $15 billion of assets in operation or under construction across the U.S.; the transaction is supported by existing investors TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, and Greenbelt Capital Partners.
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Policy storms ahead, fire safety and data centres: Energy-Storage.news 2025 Guest Blog picks, Part 1
Energy-Storage.news is publishing a two-part retrospective of its 2025 Guest Blog contributions; this first part covers the first six months of 2025 and highlights a selected set of posts.
- Retrospective & scale: Energy-Storage.news reports 44 Guest Blog contributions in 2025 (more than double 2024 and 2023) and is running the retrospective in two parts, with this instalment covering Jan–Jun 2025. Featured posts include: “Global BESS deployments soared 53% in 2024” (Iola Hughes, Jan 2025) noting 205 GWh record deployments in 2024; “Meeting US power demands of the hyperscale data centre boom with energy storage” (William Derasmo, Feb 2025); and “India’s energy storage story” (Debmalya Sen, Jun 2025).
- Context & highlights: The roundup summarises guest entries from industry players and analysts — including Intertek CEA (monthly series on fire safety and market outlook), Envision Energy (LDES analysis, Mar 2025), and an insurance-focused piece on the Moss Landing January fire and its market effects (kWh Analytics, Renewable Guard, Brown & Brown, Jun 2025). Links to each full blog post are provided for direct reference.
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Google agrees to acquire infrastructure builder Intersect to accelerate capacity development
Alphabet announced it will acquire Intersect for $4.75 billion to accelerate data center and energy project capacity and development, with the deal expected to close in the first half of 2026.
- Deal and scope: Alphabet/Google to acquire Intersect for $4.75 billion, expected close H1 2026; Google will absorb Intersect’s team and “multiple gigawatts” of energy and data projects already in development (including a co-located data center and power site under construction in Texas), while some existing Intersect Texas assets and California projects will remain independent and are not included in the transaction. The companies will jointly continue work on the included projects and build out new ones.
- Background and related initiatives: Google is pursuing diverse energy pathways — 115MW of geothermal with NV Energy to Nevada’s grid, work with Energy Dome on CO2 battery long-duration storage, and support for carbon capture at Broadwing Energy (Broadwing to capture ~90% of its CO2 emissions and Google committed to buying most of that power). Analysts (Info-Tech Research Group, Greyhound Research) frame the move as a response to upstream constraints (interconnection queues, substation upgrades, permitting) and advise tying energy strategy to capacity planning and extending energy contracting timelines.
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Tesla’s Battery Tech Powers Renewable Energy and Grid Decarbonization
Tesla emphasizes expanded deployment of its battery systems (Powerwall for homes, Megapack for grid-scale) to stabilize electricity grids and advance decarbonization.
- Main announcement/action: Tesla positions its Powerwall and Megapack systems as operational solutions to integrate renewables and stabilize grids, citing deployments at Hornsdale Power Reserve and Moss Landing facility, reporting 1.6 terawatts from virtual power plants and 6.5 million outages served by Powerwall systems in 2025; the company targets net-zero operations by 2040.
- Background and details: The article references lifecycle and sustainability initiatives including closed-loop recycling (Nevada Gigafactory pilot, full-scale target by 2026), supplier audits and a move toward cobalt-free chemistries, policy drivers such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, and mentions trends (cost declines, potential market growth) and applications including support for AI data centers.
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Alphabet Buying Clean Energy Developer to Support Data Centers
Alphabet has announced it will acquire Intersect for $4.75 billion in cash, plus the assumption of debt.
- Main announcement: Alphabet will acquire Intersect for $4.75 billion in cash, plus assumption of debt, acquiring Intersect’s team and multiple gigawatts of energy and data center projects in development or under construction (including a co-located data center and power site under construction in Haskell County, Texas). The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is anticipated to close in the first half of 2026.
- Background and details: Intersect’s existing operating assets in Texas and its operating and in-development assets in California are excluded from the acquisition and will continue as an independent company supported by TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, and Greenbelt Capital Partners. Intersect will remain a separate brand led by Sheldon Kimber, partner closely with Google’s technical infrastructure team, and Alphabet plans to advance commercialization of advanced geothermal, long duration energy storage, and natural gas with carbon capture, while deploying AI to accelerate grid connection of new power plants.
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Reality Check: How to Grow the Grid, but Not Electricity Costs
RMI’s Mark Dyson outlines three New Year’s resolutions for US utilities and policymakers to expand the power grid while keeping electricity affordable.
- Resolution 1 urges embracing new technologies such as gas turbines, wind, solar, batteries, advanced geothermal, and potentially fusion, alongside energy efficiency as a major, low-cost resource, drawing on US leadership in geothermal and international examples from Germany, Australia, and China for further cost reductions in clean energy.
- Resolution 2 and 3 call for faster project build-out by cutting interconnection and permitting delays (with examples from Texas and Virginia) and for better use of existing grid assets via virtual power plants, coordinated flexible demand (e.g., 100,000+ home batteries in California), and grid-enhancing technologies like sensors and controls demonstrated in New York, combined with modern regulatory incentives and policy toolkits to align utilities with affordability outcomes.
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It's been another banner year for Today in Energy!
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has compiled a list of its most popular 2025 Today in Energy articles and announced that regular publications will resume on January 5, 2026.
- The highlighted pieces cover LNG exports, propane exports, California gasoline prices, China’s role in battery mineral trade, the Strait of Hormuz oil chokepoint, electricity use for commercial computing vs. cooling/ventilation, global nuclear generation capacity concentration, and North American LNG export capacity growth.
- The article functions as a year-end roundup, citing original publication dates in 2025 (and one in 2024), and provides direct links to each featured analysis while noting the temporary publication pause until January 5, 2026.
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HPE dominates TOP500 with trio of exascale leaders
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has built the world’s three fastest exascale supercomputers (El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora), delivered six of the top ten TOP500 systems overall, and supplied ten of the top 20 Green500 energy-efficient machines.
- Main announcement: HPE-built systems occupy the top three TOP500 positions (El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora). Key performance figures: El Capitan — 1.809 exaflops (4% gain), Frontier — 1.353 exaflops, Aurora — 1.021 exaflops; HPE also built six of the top ten TOP500 systems and ten of the top 20 Green500 systems using fanless direct liquid cooling derived from Cray designs.
- Background and details: The ranking confirms institutional locations and uses: El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Labouratory (AMD Instinct MI300A); Frontier at Oak Ridge National Labouratory (AMD Instinct MI250 + AMD Epyc); Aurora at Argonne National Labouratory (built with Intel). HPE announced additional sovereign AI installs: TELUS (Canada) — 22.74 petaflops and Alem.Cloud Sovereign AI (Kazakhstan) — 20.48 petaflops, and continues to deploy second-generation exascale designs, liquid-cooled architectures, and open-source tools such as Chapel under the High Performance Software Foundation.
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Mergers and Acquisitions — Reviewing 2025 and Looking Ahead to 2026
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz partners review 2025 global M&A trends and outline expectations for dealmaking, regulation, financing and activism heading into 2026.
- M&A volumes surged in 2025 to $2.3 trillion US deal value (up 49% vs. 2024) and 63 global $10B+ megadeals, driven by large strategic combinations, record private equity activity (~$2T PE volume), bank consolidation, AI- and infrastructure-related transactions, and open debt markets supporting record leveraged buyouts and complex financings.
- The memo details sector hotspots (tech/AI, energy & infrastructure, banks, healthcare, media, oil & gas, crypto), regulatory shifts under the Trump administration (more traditional antitrust, SEC easing disclosures, CFIUS conditions), U.S. government equity investments (e.g., $8.9B for 9.9% of Intel, rare earths, chips), M&A-focused shareholder activism, spin-offs, CVRs, hostile bids, sovereign wealth fund participation, new HSR Act filing rules, and Delaware corporate law changes impacting future deals.