President Donald Trump is in Pittsburgh Tuesday to tout American AI, American energy, and American AI powered by American energy.
He’s looking, as usual, for deals: Among the $70 billion in investments promised by Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., that’s expected to be announced today: Google will invest $25 billion in data centers across Pennsylvania and neighboring states over the next two years and is signing a $3 billion, 20-year deal with Brookfield to upgrade two hydroelectric power plants; utility First Energy is investing $15 billion in the state’s energy grid; Westinghouse is pledging new nuclear reactor deliveries; and GE Vernova is expanding a local factory.
Executive attendees include BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Blackstone’s Jon Gray — both of whose firms are investing heavily in data centers — along with ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods, Palantir’s Alex Karp, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, whose recent dire predictions about AI’s job-destroying potential has the industry on edge and rivals rushing to stress their create a new economy, not just suck up electrons.