President Trump wants to make Pennsylvania the beating heart of America’s AI future—and he’s bringing over $90 billion in private-sector investment to do it.
Key Points:
- Google, Blackstone, and CoreWeave are spending billions to build AI data centers in Pennsylvania.
- The projects hinge on expanding power infrastructure, including nuclear, gas, and hydro.
- Trump’s AI plan focuses on speed: faster permitting, fossil fuel production, and job creation.
Standing on the campus of Carnegie Mellon, Trump rolled out a staggering slate of investment commitments—more than $90 billion across data centers, energy infrastructure, and AI-related workforce training. The goal: make Pennsylvania the AI infrastructure capital of the U.S.
Google’s headline-grabbing $25 billion investment includes a massive data center buildout and a 20-year deal to power two hydropower plants—just one piece of a broader $3 billion push for sustainable AI energy. Blackstone is matching that $25 billion number with a plan to build out energy and data infrastructure in northeast Pennsylvania, in partnership with utility giant PPL. And CoreWeave, one of the most aggressive AI compute players in the game, committed $6 billion to a new 300-megawatt data center in Lancaster.
The summit highlighted a hard pivot toward what Trump officials are calling “energy-secure AI.” Pennsylvania—already the second-largest natural gas producer in the U.S.—is being rebranded as a data-center energy engine. Projects include nuclear uprates (Constellation), natural gas plant conversions (Frontier Group), and a wave of pipeline expansions (Enbridge, TC Energy).
Google also announced an “AI Works for PA” initiative to train one million small businesses and Pittsburgh residents. Meta threw in support for rural startup acceleration through CMU. Even Anthropic got involved, backing cybersecurity education and university energy research.
AI data centers could triple power needs by 2028, per a DOE report, and the Trump admin sees PA as the spot to crank that up without blackouts. He even declared a "national energy emergency" on day one to slash red tape on fossil fuels and nuclear energy. The bet is clear: whoever controls the compute, controls the future. And Pennsylvania just got a front-row seat.
The administration is expected to release a formal “AI Action Plan” next week, reportedly focused on streamlining permitting and scaling up domestic production of AI-enabling infrastructure. Until then, this summit looks like a statement: the AI race is on, and Trump wants to run it through coal country.