AI Daily: Alphabet to acquire Intersect in $4.75B deal

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

INTERSECT ACQUISITION: Alphabet (GOOGL) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Intersect, which provides data center and energy infrastructure solutions, for $4.75B in cash, plus the assumption of debt. “Google already owns a minority stake in Intersect from a previously announced funding round. The acquisition will enable more data center and generation capacity to come online, faster, while accelerating energy development and innovation. Included in the transaction are Intersect’s world-class team and multiple gigawatts of energy and data center projects in development, or under construction, from its successful existing partnership with Google. Intersect will also explore a range of emerging technologies to increase and diversify energy supply, while supporting Google’s U.S. data center investments to meet its Cloud customers’ and users’ demand. Intersect’s operations will remain separate from Alphabet and Google under the Intersect brand and will be led by Sheldon Kimber. It will partner closely with Google’s technical infrastructure team, continuing work on in-development, and new, joint projects; this includes the companies’ first announced co-located data center and power site, under construction in Haskell County, Texas. Intersect’s existing operating assets in Texas, and its operating and in-development assets in California, will not be part of the acquisition. Those assets continue to operate as an independent company, supported by existing investors TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, and Greenbelt Capital Partners. Intersect expects a seamless transition and service continuity for customers of those assets,” Alphabet stated

FUNDING: SoftBank (SFBTY) is racing to complete its $22.5B funding commitment to Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI by the end of the year, Echo Wang, Miho Uranaka and Krystal Hu of Reuters reports, citing sources with knowledge of the matter. The company plans to raise money by selling some of its investments and may tap into its undrawn margin loans borrowed against its ownership in Arm Holdings (ARM). SoftBank has already sold its entire $5.8B stake in Nvidia (NVDA), offloaded $4.8B of its T-Mobile (TMUS) stake, and cut staff in order to raise money for its funding.

H200 CHIP SHIPMENTS: Nvidia (NVDA) has told Chinese customers it plans to begin shipping its second-most powerful AI chips to China before the mid-February Lunar New Year, initially fulfilling orders from existing inventory totaling roughly 5,000-10,000 modules, or 40,000-80,000 H200 chips, Reuters reports. The company also plans to add new production capacity, with orders for that capacity expected to open in 2Q26, according to people familiar with the matter.

AI KITCHEN APPLIANCE LINEUP: Samsung Electronics (SSNLF) announced that it will unveil its latest kitchen appliances lineup at CES 2026, including the latest iterations of its Bespoke AI refrigerator, over-the-range microwave, and slide-in range at CES 2026. The company will also highlight improvements to vision-based AI functionality enhanced with Google (GOOGL) Gemini and Google Cloud.