Largest Private Investment In PA History Announced

PENNSYLVANIA — More than $90 billion in private-sector investments in energy and artificial intelligence in Pennsylvania could create tens of thousands of jobs across the state.

It's the largest private monetary commitment in Pennsylvania history.

The funding announcement occurred Tuesday at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, an event expected to be attended by President Donald Trump. A bipartisan coalition of officials, including Republican Sen. Dave McCormick and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, also were on hand.

The event features a gathering of global executives in energy, artificial intelligence, global investors, labor leaders, and top government officials.

“As the nation’s second largest energy producer and a global nuclear power leader, Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to deliver the abundant, affordable energy that growing AI and advanced manufacturing sectors demand," McCormick said in a statement.

"We have the skilled workforce to build and operate this critical infrastructure, world-class universities driving innovation, and strategic proximity to over half the country’s population."

One company, CoreWeave, plans to commit more than $6 billion to equip a new, state-of-the-art data center in Lancaster. The initial 100 megawatt data center, with potential to expand to 300 megawatts, represents one of the first large-scale data centers of its kind in the state.

“The demand for high-performance AI compute is relentless, and CoreWeave is scaling a cloud purpose-built for AI to meet it and strengthen US leadership,” said Corewave CEO Michael Intrator.

"This data center will accelerate innovation and drive economic growth across the region. We look forward to working with leaders like Senator McCormick and Governor Shapiro to ensure this investment delivers meaningful, lasting impact.”

Additional companies also are involved.

Equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure tailored for advanced artificial intelligence workloads the Lancaster data center could help position Pennsylvania as a strategic hub for the global AI economy. The project is expected to create approximately 600 jobs during construction, with approximately 70 full-time technical and operational roles at launch, and scaling to approximately 175 over time.

Carnegie Mellon is the birthplace of AI and the university is still helping to shape the field.

“AI has the potential to drastically improve our energy consumption by assisting in developing more efficient techniques for grid operation, building better materials for batteries, and potentially even truly revolutionizing energy by accelerating the development of technologies like nuclear fusion,” Zico Kolter, head of the CMU's School of Computer Science machine learning department, said in a statement.

“These are all big bets, to be clear, and advancing science is never a sure thing, but AI at its best can be a unique enabler of so many beneficial downstream technologies.”