Donald Trump announced a massive $90 billion investment from private firms to make Pennsylvania an AI powerhouse. The funding targets tech, energy, and finance sectors, aiming to keep the U.S. ahead of China in the AI race.
The announcement dropped Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick. The focus: power infrastructure to fuel AI’s huge energy demands.
Big names like Anthropic, Blackstone, CoreWeave, Google, Constellation Energy, and Meta are on board. Blackstone is putting in $25 billion for data centers and energy infrastructure in northeast Pennsylvania. Google signed a 20-year deal with Brookfield for two hydropower plants to keep the state’s grid green. Meta is tossing $2.5 million into rural startup programs with Carnegie Mellon. 
Anthropic is backing cybersecurity education for middle and high schools with $1 million and another $1 million for energy research at Carnegie Mellon.
Data centers’ energy needs are exploding. Global electricity use for data centers is expected to double by 2030 to 945 terawatt-hours—more than Japan’s entire consumption. The International Energy Agency warned about this in April. JPMorgan says Dominion Energy is already raising its power projections.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stressed the national security angle, calling AI a “country of geniuses in a data center.” He warned the U.S. must secure the whole supply chain, from chips to energy.
Trump made AI and tech investment a core goal from day one. He declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office and launched a $500 billion AI infrastructure project called Stargate, teaming up OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. He’s also aiming to roll back Biden-era export restrictions on AI chips.
The AI showdown with China is heating up, especially after Chinese startup DeepSeek dropped its R1 AI model this year.
Trump said at the summit:
“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.”
“We’re here today because we believe that America’s destiny is to dominate every industry and be the first in every technology, and that includes being the world’s number one superpower in artificial intelligence.”
“And we are way ahead of China. I have to say we’re way ahead of China.”
