Donnie Politics Pours $92B Worth of Gas on America’s AI Bonfire (Spoiler: No Federal Cash in Sight)

In the midst of swooning over bank earnings and panic-selling Netflix because it only beat earnings by a normal amount, Trump rolled into Pittsburgh and casually unveiled $92 billion in AI and energy infrastructure investments like it was just another Tuesday. The guy basically staged an industrial revolution kickoff and half the market missed it because JPMorgan was still digesting Powell’s “maybe I’ll get fired” face. 

(Source: Giphy) 

For starters, the numbers are stupid big, and Trump brought receipts. Blackstone alone is committing $25B to AI-fueled data centers and gas-fired power plants in a masterstroke of vertical integration. Turns out, building AI bots in rural Pennsylvania isn’t possible without liquifying the grid and duct-taping it to Nvidia’s quarterly guidance. CoreWeave’s dropping another $6B on a hyperscale temple to Jensen Huang, and even Meta got in the mix… with a hilariously modest $2.5 million thrown at rural small biz support. Thanks, Zuck. That’ll buy about three Ethernet cables and a vending machine.

(Source: Bloomberg) 

And yet, the setup was even more magical. Trump took the stage at Carnegie Mellon’s inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, flanked by half of Goldman’s Rolodex and what may as well have been the domestic G7 of tech and finance. Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Larry Fink (BlackRock), Alex Karp (Palantir), and Ruth Porat (Alphabet) were all in the room, probably wondering how they got roped into an event that also featured Doug Burgum and David Sacks playing federal agency mall-cop. 

However, what’s really clear about this is that Trump is officially nationalizing the stack… with private money. This isn’t about pushing out some lukewarm broadband bill or funding another coastal incubator full of pitch decks and hoodies. This is industrial AI, running on actual power… coal, gas, nuclear, take your pick. The permits are flowing, construction is underway, and Trump, in his own very subtle way, reminded everyone that China can’t build what America won’t permit. “Murica! 

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Meanwhile, Google is inking $3B hydro deals with Brookfield. GE Vernova is throwing $100M into grid equipment factories. FirstEnergy is dumping $15B into grid resilience across 56 counties. This is the real-world plumbing required to make AI more than a Twitter thread. If you think OpenAI gets to AGI before the power grid stops blinking, you haven’t seen a transformer explode during a Pennsylvania winter LOL. 

In fact, by 2035, data centers are projected to chew through nearly 9% of all U.S. electricity… up from 3.5% today. That’s a dang chokehold if I’ve ever seen one. Especially considering we're not exactly starting from a place of surplus. The government is already invoking emergency authority to keep power plants from shutting down. Trump’s position? Own your own d*n plant. Problem solved.

(Source: Giphy) 

But again, the big part that most missed, is that Trump didn’t drop a single dollar of federal cash to make this happen. These are private firms, dropping multi-billion-dollar bets on American soil, because they believe the rails are being laid… fast. Meaning, if you’re an investor waiting for the next “big AI catalyst,” this might’ve been it. Trump literally walked into Pittsburgh and dropped what amounts to the opening chapter of the next industrial policy era. And then walked out. Translation: The man is GOATed and he’s not f*ing around.

For now though, keep your eyes on this story as it’s still developing, but it’s clear, Big Tech thinks they have a sugar daddy. They just don’t realize the sugar daddy is making them cough up the bill. “Leverage”. So with that, place your bets accordingly and keep your head on the swivel. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Alphabet (Google) and Netflix as mentioned in the article.