US President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared the dawn of a “true golden age for America,” as he touted more than $90 billion in energy and technology investments at a high-profile innovation summit in Pennsylvania.
Speaking at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, Trump struck a triumphant tone while addressing a crowd of business leaders, government officials, and students, saying the US was leading the world in both energy production and artificial intelligence.
“We are way ahead of China, I have to say,” Trump said during a roundtable discussion, flanked by Cabinet officials and corporate executives. “China and other countries are racing to catch up to America on AI, and we’re not going to let them do it.”
The event, hosted by Republican Sen. David McCormick, highlighted Pittsburgh’s growing prominence in robotics, AI, and clean energy research. McCormick announced more than $90 billion in public-private investment across Pennsylvania, Much of it focused on job creation, technological development, and energy infrastructure.
Some of the projects, however, were already in the pipeline before the summit, raising questions about how much of the investment was newly secured. “I think we have a true golden age for America,” Trump said. “And we’ve been showing it, and it truly is the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
Pennsylvania, a politically important state with deep ties to both coal and natural gas, plays a crucial role in Trump’s energy strategy. The Republican administration has taken regulatory steps to boost fossil fuel industries while simultaneously pledging rapid AI development to counter China’s rise.
“You’re going to see some real action here. So get ready,” Trump told the audience, drawing applause.
Trump’s remarks painted a future where AI and traditional energy are not at odds, but complementary tools in strengthening the nation’s global standing. He emphasised the administration’s commitment to “friendly” but firm competition with China.
“The US will be fighting them in a very friendly fashion,” Trump added.
Before Trump spoke, his Cabinet members spoke of the need to produce as much energy as possible, especially from coal and natural gas to beat China in the AI race for the sake of economic and national security.
“The AI revolution is upon us,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during an earlier panel discussion.” The Trump administration will not let us lose. We need to do clean, beautiful coal. We need to do natural gas, we need to embrace nuclear, we need to embrace it all because we have the power to do it and if we don’t do it we’re fools.”
Some of the investments on a list released by McCormick’s office were not necessarily brand-new, while others were. Some involve massive data centre projects such as a $15 billion project in central Pennsylvania while others involve building power plants, expanding natural gas pipelines, upgrading power plants or improving electricity transmission networks.
Google said it would invest $25 billion on AI and data centre infrastructure over the next two years in PJM’s mid-Atlantic electricity grid, while investment firm Brookfield said it had signed contracts to provide more than $3 billion of power to Google’s data centres from two hydroelectric dams on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.
Frontier Group said it would transform the former Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant in western Pennsylvania into a new natural gas-fired plant, and AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave said it will spend more than $6 billion to equip a data centre in south-central Pennsylvania.
Blackstone plans to spend $25 billion on data centres and building new natural gas-fired power plants in northeastern Pennsylvania, and the company will start construction by the end of 2028, said Jon Gray, its CEO.
The list of participating CEOs includes leaders from global behemoths like Blackstone, Bridgewater, SoftBank, Amazon Web Services, BlackRock and ExxonMobil and local companies such as the Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, which deploys AI to bolster energy capacity.
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Inputs from Associated Press
