United States President Donald Trump announced investments of more than US$90 million from private companies tied to AI, tech and energy during the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).
The summit was held by Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick and was part of the Trump administration's push to ensure the U.S. stays ahead of China in the AI race.
At the event, Trump also emphasised his mission for the American economy to produce as much as it can within U.S. borders at every stage of a product's life.
“With that historic announcement and the new commitments being made today, we’re building a future where American workers will forge the steel, produce the energy, build the factories and really run a country like, I believe, like this country has never been run before,” Trump said at the event.
Pennsylvania is also the leader in gas production in the country and the epicentre of the fracking boom with investments linked to the initiative from energy companies like a $25 billion investment in data centre and energy infrastructure development in Northeast Pennsylvania from Blackstone, and $15 billion in expansions announced by First Energy.
McCormack published a fact sheet that disclosed how much some companies were investing.
On the AI front, Google, CoreWeave, Anthropic and Meta are some of the biggest players.
Google’s president and chief executive, Ruth Porat said the company plans to invest US$25 billion in building a data centre and AI over the next two years across the PJM region. The region includes 13 states and Washington DC, along with a 20-year US$3 billion hydropower deal with Brookfield Energy.
CoreWeave announced plans to invest US$6 billion in a data centre for powering “cutting-edge AI use cases” in Pennsylvania.
Over the next three years, Anthropic will support a program that provides cybersecurity education and an additional US$1 million over three years to “support energy research at Carnegie Mellon University”.
Meta has announced US$2.5 million as part of a partnership program with the Schwartz Centre for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University as a way to support startups in rural Pennsylvania communities in addition to community accelerator training for small businesses.
The fact sheet also included gas companies like Enbridge, Equinor and Capital Power.
This comes as tech giants grapple with the demanding need for energy required power AI, with electricity demand from data centres expected to double globally to around 945 terawatt-hours by 2030. This is slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency.
At the same time, Westinghouse told Donald Trump that it plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in the U.S., with construction to begin in 2030.
The building of these reactors would power 75,000 homes, according to the company and follows through on Trump’s executive orders that aim to quadruple nuclear power in the country by 2050.
It would also drive US$75 billion of economic value across the U.S. and US$6 billion to Pennsylvania.
