President Trump will be in Pittsburgh Tuesday to attend a major energy and AI summit at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, organized and hosted by Republican U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, will also be attended by leaders of many of the country’s largest energy and technology companies.
McCormick is set to announce $70 billion in new investments into energy and innovation in the state. Among them will be the construction of data centers to help provide the enormous amounts of energy needed to power AI.
The Pittsburgh region will be prominent at the summit, with a focus on technological innovations being developed here and the massive energy resources available to power them.
The event comes shortly after Amazon’s announcement of a $20 billion investment in data centers across Pennsylvania, the largest economic development project in the state’s history, and a $14 billion partnership between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel to boost domestic steel production and protect thousands of jobs.
The White House says Mr. Trump is scheduled to depart Washington, D.C. at 12:30 p.m. and will be participating in the summit in Pittsburgh at 2:30.
Major political and industry leaders will be in Pittsburgh
Several of the president’s Cabinet members will join him at the summit.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks are among Trump administration officials listed as summit participants.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, will also be there, participating in a panel about major investments in Pennsylvania that will be moderated by Penn State University President Dr. Neeli Bendapudi.
Industry leaders like Alphabet President and CEO Ruth Porat, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Blackstone President and CEO Jon Gray, Gecko Robotics Founder and CEO Jake Loosararian, EQT President and CEO Toby Rice, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman are all listed as panel participants, as well.
Trump’s visit to Pittsburgh expected to receive some pushback
Mr. Trump’s visit will not be without pushback, as evidenced on CMU’s campus, where signs painted with the words “protest the summit” could be seen on The Fence.
KDKA-TV 
That sentiment on the CMU Fence was also posted on social media to, in the words of activists, “call on students and the Pittsburgh community to stand against fossil fuels, AI for surveillance, and authoritarianism.”
