PITTSBURGH — Dina Powell McCormick will kick off the highly anticipated 2025 Energy and Innovation Summit on Tuesday morning by moderating a panel titled The AI Race and How We Win It, which will include the White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks, Blackzone CEO Jon Gray, Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al-Mubarak, and SoftBank CEO Rene Hass.
Powell McCormick’s panel sets the tone for President Donald Trump’s call to win the race for AI dominance and shows how western Pennsylvania will have a unique role in making that happen.
In the afternoon, Trump will join a business roundtable with local industry stakeholders to discuss how innovation, technology, the trades, and the energy sector can work together to help the country become the world leader in AI.
Participants from across the sector, including investors, university officials, energy executives, and politicos from both sides of the aisle, all said that without Powell McCormick’s sheer will, Pennsylvania would not be receiving the attention it will get after Tuesday’s events.
One of the panels will include Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe, a sort of evangelical for the trades who will stress the importance of guiding young people toward the jobs that will fuel AI data processing centers, including the natural gas and nuclear power sectors.
ONE YEAR LATER, BUTLER HAS FEW ANSWERS
And as a showcase for how nonpartisan the panels will be, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) will join Powell McCormick’s husband, Sen. David McCormick (R-PA), on a panel moderated by Pennsylvania State University President Neeli Bendapudi that will focus on making sure higher education can meet industry needs.
Powell McCormick was with Trump eight years ago when he announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, declaring the U.S. commitment to those policies a “self-inflicted major economic wound.” Trump said he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”