AI Labs Commit Over $265M to Train Electricians and Carpenters, and OpenAI Told the White House It Needs a Fifth of All US Skilled Tradespeople
Meta, Google, and BlackRock are jointly putting more than $265 million into recruiting and training construction trades for data-center buildout: Meta $115 million for year one of a multi-year program enrolling roughly 5,000 people in a month-long course with transportation and housing covered before they move onto Meta contractors' job sites; Google $50 million to the IBEW and its contractor network to grow annual apprenticeship intake from 19,500 to 30,000 over three years; BlackRock $100 million for Texas trades training. The figure that reframes the story is OpenAI's own submission to the White House that its infrastructure plans alone require a fifth of all US skilled tradespeople, and OpenAI's Saline Township, Michigan site has electricians on ten-hour shifts with no days off. The inversion is the point for a software audience: the labor bottleneck in AI right now is not engineers, and the trades are seeing some of the highest pay they have ever had — the HN thread ran 294 points and 366 comments.
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