Sen. Dave McCormick and Trump look to lure AI companies to Pa. at an innovation summit unveiling $70B in investments
President Trump’s Tuesday visit to Pennsylvania comes days after the anniversary of his survival of an assassination attempt in Butler.
Sen. Dave McCormick will announce, alongside President Donald Trump, $70 billion in AI and energy investments in Pennsylvania at an “innovation summit,” in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
The summit, organized by the freshman Republican senator, will draw together more than 60 international CEOs of energy, technology, and AI companies. The event will include several announcements of planned projects in the state, according to a preview of the summit reported by Axios.
Blackstone, a New York–based asset management firm, will announce a $26 billion data center and “energy infrastructure development” in Northeast Pennsylvania, according to Axios. The company is also planning a joint power generation project expected to bring in 6,000 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent jobs according to McCormick’s office’s figures.
Trump returns to Pennsylvania for the summit for the first time since he attended the NCAA wrestling finals with McCormick in Philadelphia in March and just days after the one-year anniversary of a failed assassination attempt against him in Butler.
On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance will be in Pennsylvania — his first time since becoming vice president — to visit a manufacturing plant in West Pittston, Luzerne County, between Scranton and Wiles-Barre. Vance will celebrate the passage of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” as the administration launches an effort to convince voters of the advantages of the legislation that is largely unpopular with voters in most polls.
Democrats have gone on an aggressive offensive against the newly signed law arguing that cuts to Medicaid will be devastating for poor and working-class Americans.
McCormick joined all Pennsylvania Republicans, except for U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, in voting for the bill. McCormick has been a defender of Trump’s agenda and someone who has had the president’s ear as he has settled into his first six months in the Senate.
The summit on Tuesday is intended to focus on investments in new data centers, power generation, and grid infrastructure and AI training.
McCormick is the former CEO of Bridgewater, one of the world’s largest hedge funds. His wife, Dina Powell, a former deputy national security adviser to Trump in his first term, is now on the board of directors of Meta. Together, the couple has a large Rolodex of connections in the investment and technology industries.
Amazon announced in June that it would build two new data centers in Pennsylvania.
CEOs expected to attend the Pittsburgh summit include ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods, Chevron’s Mike Wirth, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Palantir’s Alex Karp, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Amazon Web Services’ Matt Garman, Bechtel’s Brendan Bechtel, Bridgewater’s Nir Bar Dea, Singapore-based GIC’s Lim Chow Kiat, Brookfield’s Bruce Flatt, CPP Investments’ John Graham, and EQT’s Toby Rice.
The summit will include panels and excursions around Pittsburgh for visiting CEOs before Trump’s headline address Tuesday afternoon.
Joining the president from Washington, according to the preview, will be Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Interior Secretary Doug Burgum; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; Energy Secretary Chris Wright; Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin; White House chief of staff Susie Wiles; and David Sacks, White House AI and crypto czar.
In addition to many Republican members of the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro will attend, as will Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), according to Axios.
Shapiro will participate on a panel about Pennsylvania investments with McCormick and Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, according to an event schedule shared by McCormick’s office.