Big Tech, Unions And Private Equity Team Up To Stop States From Freezing Data Center Construction

Top artificial intelligence and private equity firms are teaming up with building trades unions to stop states from freezing data center construction.

OpenAI, Blackstone, QTS and SoftBank joined five unions to form the American Infrastructure Alliance (AIA), a multimillion-dollar coalition that plans to work with officials in seven states on data center standards in 2027 to head off moratoriums, Axios first reported Monday.

“Blanket bans on necessary infrastructure projects would set back our economy and threaten good middle-class jobs,” Kenneth Cooper, international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), told Axios.

The alliance is a “high eight-figure campaign” but is not disclosing specific spending amounts, a spokesperson said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“AIA will support standards that ensure that operators pay for the energy and infrastructure needed, protecting households, ratepayers, and local communities from added costs,” the spokesperson added. “More expansive guidelines are forthcoming.”

The IBEW did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation at Food & Water Watch, an environmental group that has called for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers, said in a statement to the DCNF that the construction jobs data centers create are “transitory and fleeting.”

“Once centers are constructed, very few jobs remain in the facilities themselves,” Jones said. “Our research has found that as of 2024 there were only 23,000 people working permanently in data centers across the country.”

“The point of a moratorium is to allow for rigorous study to determine if this industry can ever be regulated safely,” Jones added. “This is truly an open question.”