TURTLE CREEK, Pennsylvania — Joe Mastrangelo’s dream of taking his Eos Energy Storage from an upstart manufacturing facility of energy storage systems to a power player in the energy industry came to fruition on Tuesday with the announcement that the production facilities in the Mon Valley will remain. It will also relocate its headquarters from New Jersey to the North Side of Pittsburgh and expand its production line to a 432,000-square-foot facility in the northern suburbs.
Mastrangelo said he was excited to be expanding the footprint in Pennsylvania.
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“What we’ve always said is that we wanted our manufacturing capacity near customer demand, and now Pennsylvania’s becoming the center of the AI buildout because of the natural resources,” he said of the natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities ready to power up artificial intelligence data power centers.
“I think this also shows you need an all-in energy strategy to really build out the AI infrastructure and give not only the AI and hyperscalers the power they need to run their data centers but also to keep the consumers and normal operations safe and reliably running,” he said of their non-lithium storage systems.
“One of the things we’ve always said from a strategy standpoint is you’ve got a differentiated battery technology that we can uniquely package in a way that provides the highest footprint density in the industry,” Mastrangelo said.
“Now with the expansion, we will have a software offering that allows you to truly optimize the operation of the equipment,” he said.
Eos’s new location on the North Side is critical because it allows it to tap into the university ecosystem of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh to help it continue to build its capabilities on the tech side.
“We first came here and tapped into the heritage of building things, and now we’re tapping into the infrastructure of the minds that innovate things,” he said.
Western Pennsylvania is fast becoming the center of not just energy — there is an abundance of coal and natural gas underground — but also AI. It is where the best of the best in the country, when it comes to AI, Pitt and CMU, will serve as incubators for talent. CMU is the home of the first AI computer, dating back to the 1950s. The region is also legendary for its work ethic. That’s where the nearby Community College of Allegheny County comes into the mix: to tap into the sons and daughters of the skilled artisans in welding, electronics, and plumbing who have been waiting for this boom to materialize.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who stood shoulder to shoulder with Mastrangelo during the event, said Eos is a forward-thinking company.
“I spent a great deal of time working with the leadership at Eos to find the exact right place for them in southwestern Pennsylvania and the exact right formula of Commonwealth support that would allow them to create about a thousand new jobs in this region,” he said.
What appeals to Shapiro is that a college degree is not required to be part of Eos’s labor force, which matches the governor’s edict when he was first sworn in to open up state employment to those without a college degree.
“What’s super exciting to me is that the thousand jobs they’re going to create have so much opportunity for those hardworking people who don’t have a college degree. Sixty-two percent of Pennsylvania adults don’t have a college degree, and I’ve been very purposeful in funding pathways to opportunity for people who choose not to go to college,” he said.
In short, there have been more opportunities in this new AI-energy-steel boom for high school graduates in Allegheny County to make their way over to Eos and have a good-paying job and a wonderful career in a cutting-edge company.
Pennsylvania is now the only state in the Northeast with a growing economy, and one reason is that companies like Eos are taking advantage of the state’s dominant position in energy and creating more opportunities for workers without a college degree.
Shapiro said companies like Eos create multiple layers of jobs.
“You need the research brains at a PIT or CMU to help power this technology forward. You need the skilled labor that’s coming out of our union halls and through our high schools and the vo-tech training programs. And you need the resources under our ground to be able to make these unique batteries,” he said.
Matt Smith, the president of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, said that having a governor who leans into economic development like Shapiro provides an added touch.
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“That is something that Pennsylvania has been lacking for a couple of decades now. And the fact that Pennsylvania is competing and has a right to win these projects is different since he got in there and his administration,” Smith said.
Mastrangelo and Shapiro were joined by the employees at this plant, most of them members of the United Steelworkers union, in one of the iconic buildings that was once home to the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.