Blackstone to invest $25B in AI data centers and energy
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Blackstone plans to invest $25 billion in American data centers and energy generation to drive AI innovation.
Why it matters: AI capability demands massive investments in data processing capability, which requires significant electricity.
Driving the news: Blackstone will make the investment in northeast Pennsylvania, president and COO Jon Gray said Tuesday at the Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Penn.) at Carnegie Mellon University. President Trump is expected to attend the event.
- "We've identified several sites that we've secured to build large data centers, which we think is critically important," Gray said.
- And the company also plans "to make an announcement with a utility here in the state to build" natural gas plants, he added.
- The project is expected to bring 6,000 construction jobs annually, plus 3,000 permanent jobs, Axios' Mike Allen reported Monday.
- Blackstone will reveal more details later Tuesday.
The big picture: AI companies are scrambling to fulfill their energy needs as their technology advances.
- "We've got to get better on power," Gray said, adding that "it's a limiting factor" for the AI economy until then.
- "We have to drill, baby, drill, and we have to build, baby, build," David Sacks, President Trump's AI and crypto czar, said at the summit. "We have to keep building new power."
What to watch: Gray said "the special sauce" in the Blackstone investment will be "the idea that you can colocate the data centers directly next to the source of power."
