The Claim

Secured $90 billion in AI and energy investment in Pennsylvania alone through direct presidential engagement and relentless advocacy for the commonwealth’s resources.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Three things: (1) that $90 billion in AI and energy investment has been directed to Pennsylvania, (2) that this investment was “secured” — implying firm commitments, and (3) that it resulted from “direct presidential engagement and relentless advocacy” — attributing the investment to Trump’s personal involvement.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That without Trump’s personal intervention, these investments would not have come to Pennsylvania. That $90 billion represents genuinely new capital commitments rather than repackaged or pre-existing plans. That the full $90 billion will actually materialize. The word “secured” implies binding agreements with enforcement mechanisms, not press conference announcements.

What is conspicuously absent?

The role of Pennsylvania’s structural advantages — second-largest natural gas producer in the nation via the Marcellus Shale, position within the PJM grid (the largest electric grid in the U.S.), and an established technology corridor around Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. The state’s own $2 billion data center tax exemption program that specifically targets these investments. The fact that multiple investments were in planning or execution before the summit. The role of Senator Dave McCormick in organizing the summit and claiming credit alongside Trump. The fact that most of the $90 billion remains in announcement phase with multi-year timelines. The overlap with the broader $10 trillion investment figure claimed in item 93 and the $2.7 trillion AI figure in item 128 — this is a geographic subset being counted separately.

Padding Analysis: Geographic Subset of Items 93 and 128

This claim isolates a single-state slice of the same investment announcements counted in item 93 (“$10 trillion in new domestic investment”) and item 128 (“$2.7 trillion in tech and AI investment”). The Pennsylvania investments are a subset of those broader totals — every dollar counted here is also counted there. The White House’s own July 2025 press release framing confirms this: “President Trump Solidifies U.S. Position as Leader in AI” covers both the national AI figure and the Pennsylvania summit in the same narrative. This is the same pool of announcements presented at three different zoom levels — national ($10T), sectoral ($2.7T AI), and state ($90B) — to create the impression of three separate achievements.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The $90 billion figure derives from announcements made at the Inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on July 15, 2025, organized by Senator Dave McCormick at Carnegie Mellon University. The summit featured approximately 20 companies making investment pledges. The largest announced commitments include Blackstone ($25 billion), PA Data Center Partners/Powerhouse ($15 billion), Homer City Redevelopment/EQT ($15 billion in natural gas purchases), FirstEnergy ($15 billion in grid upgrades), PPL Corporation ($6.8 billion), CoreWeave ($6 billion), Energy Capital Partners ($5 billion), Frontier Group ($3.2 billion), Brookfield/Google ($3 billion hydropower), Capital Power ($3 billion), Constellation Energy ($2.4 billion), and Equinor ($1.6 billion). At the other end, Anthropic pledged $2 million for a CMU education program and Meta contributed a $2.5 million gift to a university startup center. ¹

Multiple investments counted in the $90 billion total were already planned or in execution before the summit and before Trump’s second term. WESA (Pittsburgh NPR affiliate) documented several pre-existing projects: Frontier Group purchased the former Bruce Mansfield coal plant site in 2022 with redevelopment intentions, supported by a Biden DOE feasibility grant; FirstEnergy’s “Energize365” grid program began planning in 2024 with $26 billion allocated for 2024-2028, with its first phase dating to 2016; GE Vernova told investors in December 2024 of $9 billion growth plans; Brookfield filed FERC renewal notices for the hydroelectric dams in April 2024, a year before the summit; and CoreWeave’s Lancaster data center began Phase 1 construction in 2024. The Energy Innovation Center Infrastructure Academy had been operating for over a year before being announced as “new” at the summit. ²

Pennsylvania offers a 25-year sales and use tax exemption for data center equipment, projected to cost the state approximately $2 billion in lost revenue by mid-2031. The Shapiro administration projects the cost at $188 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year, escalating to $517 million annually by 2031. Companies investing at least $75 million and creating at least 25 jobs receive exemption from the state’s 6% sales tax on server equipment, cooling systems, and software. This state-level incentive program — not presidential engagement — is the specific policy mechanism designed to attract data center investment. ³

As of early 2026, most of the $90 billion remains in announcement phase. Technical.ly’s project tracker found that while some projects show confirmed progress (Homer City air quality plan approved November 2025, FirstEnergy completing some grid upgrades, CoreWeave Phase 1 underway, PA Data Center Partners receiving subdivision plan approval in January 2026), several major announcements have produced no public progress updates: Constellation Energy, Equinor, GE Vernova’s Charleroi expansion, and Anthropic have reported no milestones. McCormick’s office did not respond to Technical.ly’s request for comment on discrepancies between claimed investment amounts and what companies confirmed. Blackstone’s construction is not expected to begin until year-end 2028, pending regulatory approvals. ⁴

Pennsylvania’s structural advantages — not presidential engagement — are the primary drivers of data center and energy investment in the commonwealth. Pennsylvania is the second-largest natural gas producing state via the Marcellus Shale, sits within the PJM Interconnection (the largest electric grid in the U.S., covering 13 states), hosts Carnegie Mellon University’s world-class AI research programs, and has an established technology corridor. PJM forecasts electricity demand will grow by nearly 70% over the next two decades, with data centers accounting for all but 2 GW of the 32 GW projected peak load growth from 2024 to 2030. These structural factors — cheap natural gas, grid capacity, technical talent, and state tax incentives — explain why Pennsylvania attracts data center investment regardless of who occupies the White House. ⁵

Strong Inferences

The $90 billion figure is inflated by counting investments that span multi-state regions as Pennsylvania-specific. Google’s $25 billion investment announcement, for example, was for data centers and AI infrastructure across the entire PJM region — 13 states from New Jersey to Illinois — not exclusively for Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania-specific component is the $3 billion Brookfield hydropower deal. Similarly, Westinghouse’s plan to develop 10 nuclear reactors is a nationwide initiative with estimated $6 billion in “economic impact” for southwestern Pennsylvania, not $6 billion in direct Pennsylvania investment. The practice of counting regional and national commitments as state-specific spending inflates the headline number. ⁶

The summit served dual political purposes for both Trump and McCormick. Senator Dave McCormick, a first-term Republican who won his seat in 2024, organized the event and positioned himself alongside Trump as a co-deliverer of investment. The summit format — a staged announcement event with prepared corporate pledges — mirrors the pattern identified in item 93 where companies make splashy announcements to build political goodwill and secure favorable regulatory treatment. Trump spoke for approximately 30 minutes, primarily emphasizing fossil fuel energy policy. The bipartisan nature of the underlying investments is evidenced by Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s attendance and his administration’s active role in the data center tax exemption program. ⁷

What the Evidence Shows

The $90 billion figure is real in the sense that companies did announce investment intentions totaling approximately that amount at a single event. This is not a fabricated number. Some of these projects — Homer City, CoreWeave, PA Data Center Partners — are genuinely underway. Pennsylvania is experiencing a real data center and energy infrastructure boom, and the summit captured a genuine economic moment.

But the claim’s core assertion — that this investment was “secured” through “direct presidential engagement” — fails on multiple levels. First, the attribution is wrong. Pennsylvania’s data center boom is driven by structural advantages (natural gas, grid position, talent) and state-level policy (a $2 billion tax exemption program), not by a president giving a 30-minute speech at Carnegie Mellon. Multiple projects were in planning or execution before Trump’s second term began. Second, “secured” misrepresents non-binding announcements with multi-year horizons as firm commitments. Blackstone’s construction hasn’t begun and isn’t expected until 2028. Several announced projects have produced no public progress. Third, the $90 billion figure is inflated by counting multi-state and national investments as Pennsylvania-specific.

Most importantly, this is the same investment pool counted in items 93 and 128, sliced by geography. Every dollar announced at the Pennsylvania summit feeds into both the “$10 trillion in domestic investment” claim and the “$2.7 trillion in AI investment” claim. The White House is not claiming three separate pools of investment — it is claiming the same corporate announcements three times at different zoom levels, turning one set of announcements into three separate “wins.”

The Bottom Line

Credit where it is due: the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit was a well-executed event that brought genuine corporate commitments into public view, and some of those commitments are materializing. Pennsylvania is genuinely positioned to be an AI infrastructure hub, and some acceleration of timelines may have occurred from the political attention. The $90 billion figure, while inflated by multi-state counting and pre-existing plans, is not invented from whole cloth — these are real companies making real announcements about real projects.

But the claim that this was “secured” through “direct presidential engagement” is misleading. The investments are driven by Pennsylvania’s natural gas reserves, grid infrastructure, technical talent, and a generous state tax incentive program — not by a president appearing at a summit organized by a senator building his own political brand. When the same investments are counted as part of the $10 trillion domestic investment claim, the $2.7 trillion AI claim, and the $90 billion Pennsylvania claim, it becomes clear that the “365 wins” list treats a single economic phenomenon as multiple separate achievements. The real story is a nationwide data center boom driven by AI demand, cheap energy, and state-level competition for tech investment — a story in which “direct presidential engagement” is the ribbon-cutting, not the foundation.

Footnotes

1. Senator Dave McCormick, “FACT SHEET: More Than $90 Billion in Investments Announced at Senator McCormick’s Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit,” July 15, 2025. https://www.mccormick.senate.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-more-than-90-billion-in-investments-announced-at-senator-mccormicks-pennsylvania-energy-and-innovation-summit/; CBS News Pittsburgh, “Trump unveils $90 billion in energy and AI investments for Pennsylvania during summit in Pittsburgh,” July 15, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/trump-energy-ai-summit-pittsburgh-carnegie-mellon/ ↩

2. 90.5 WESA, “$90B in Pa. energy & AI investments were underway before Trump,” July 22, 2025. https://www.wesa.fm/economy-business/2025-07-22/90b-ai-investments-pennsylvania-without-trump ↩

3. Spotlight PA, “PA data center tax break expected to cost $2B,” February 2026. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/data-centers-pennsylvania-tax-break-sales-exemption-capitol/ ↩

4. Technical.ly, “Tracking Pennsylvania’s $90B AI, energy and data center projects and milestones,” February 2026 (updated). https://technical.ly/entrepreneurship/pa-90b-data-center-investments-updates-tracker/ ↩

5. E&E News by Politico, “Trump details $90B AI plan to transform Pennsylvania grid,” July 16, 2025. https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-details-90b-ai-plan-to-transform-pennsylvania-grid/; PJM demand forecasts from Pennsylvania Capital-Star, “PJM weighs proposals to manage data center impact on electricity affordability and reliability,” September 2025. https://penncapital-star.com/economy/pjm-weighs-proposals-to-manage-data-center-impact-on-electricity-affordability-and-reliability/ ↩

6. CNBC, “Google to invest $25 billion in data centers, AI infrastructure in PJM,” July 15, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/15/google-to-invest-25-billion-in-data-centers-ai-infrastructure-in-pjm.html ↩

7. CBS News Pittsburgh, July 15, 2025; White House, “ICYMI: President Trump Announces $92+ Billion in AI, Energy Powerhouse Investments,” July 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/icymi-president-trump-announces-92-billion-in-ai-energy-powerhouse-investments/ ↩