On May 6, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink appeared alongside Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at an event called “National Skilled Trades Day” hosted by Texas State Technical College outside of Waco, the goal of which was ostensibly to draft more technicians for the seemingly unending data center construction bonanza currently underway.
Related: Chinese Communist Party Literally Names Its Domestic Surveillance Program 'Skynet'
Via Houston Chronicle (emphasis added):
With data centers booming across Texas and population growth continuing steadily, BlackRock is committing $30 million to train more than 12,000 Texas workers for electrical careers.
…Formally announced Wednesday [May 6], National Skilled Trades Day, at an event hosted by Texas State Technical College in Waco. It comes as the state has assumed a central role in the nationwide race to construct data centers to support the growth of artificial intelligence and other data-heavy industries.
"The scale of growth underway in Texas demands a workforce ready to build it," said Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, in a news release announcing the grants.
The state "sits at the center of America's infrastructure and energy buildout," noted BlackRock.
Texas' data center load could more than double by 2028, according to a January report from Bloom Energy, which would give the state about 30% of the United States data center market. The state could become the world's largest data center market by 2030, according to a February report from JLL, which cited "plentiful land and energy" as a factor fueling Texas's growth potential.
Even before the surge in data center construction began, however, the state was facing a shortage of electricians and electrical workers driven by population growth and rising power demands.
The $30 million in funding for workforce training in Texas is part of the broader $100 million Future Builders initiative BlackRock announced in March, which aims to prepare 50,000 Americans for careers in various skilled trades. The nationwide initiative points to a growing demand for HVAC technicians, plumbers, and ironworkers as well as electricians, across the U.S.
The event also, of course, doubled as a sales pitch to the public, which is largely and increasingly opposed to the data center bonanza.
Fink is, at that event, suggesting that American pensioners and workers, for their own good, so as to “grow with the United States,” dump their pension funds and 401(k)s into AI infrastructure buildout:
If we could get more and more Americans to think about growing with the United States, we will have far than enough money to invest in this [AI] infrastructure….
The need for electrons is growing every day… If we're going to be the leader in technology, which we are, if we’re going to be the leader in AI, which we presently are, it's just going to require trillions of dollars of investments. And if we don't invest in it, China will be the global leader in this….
To me this is not ‘whether,’ this is a must…. It translates into a more dynamic economy. We need the United States economy to grow at over 2%, we need the U.S. economy to grow at 3%, especially with the growing deficits the federal government has.
And so, this money… is going to be coming from the private sector, from savings accounts, from pension accounts, from insurance companies and on and on and on. The whole world is in need of improving infrastructure.
Blackrock CEO Larry Fink to American workers: Give us your pensions to invest in AI or else the Chinese will win pic.twitter.com/MchXFpRwjE
— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) May 28, 2026
Related: Techno-Hell: Walmart Partners With Google Drones to Deliver Products in Dallas
Kind of odd that Fink doesn’t seem overly concerned with literally any other form of infrastructure besides data centers.
For instance, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore that a ship crashed into still hasn’t been rebuilt two years later. I haven’t ever seen him lobby for that.
But whatever.
Priorities, priorities.
In his Letter to Investors last year, Fink similarly pitched current and future retirees on investing in AI, noting the very true and unfortunate reality that most Americans are headed into an utterly underfunded financial situation post-retirement.
Via Larry Fink’s 2025 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors (emphasis added):
While BlackRock helps people invest for retirement all over the world, I want to focus on the U.S. in this section. Because the situation is dire. Public pensions are facing huge shortfalls. Nationwide, the data shows they’re only about 80% funded—and that’s probably an overly optimistic number. Meanwhile, a third of the country has no retirement savings at all. No pensions, no 401(k)—nothing.
As money runs shorter, lives are getting longer. Today, if you're married and both of you reach 65, there's a 50/50 chance at least one of you lives until 90. And with biomedical breakthroughs like GLP-1 drugs, many more chronic diseases might soon become curable.
That's an incredible blessing—but it also underscores something frustrating: We're great at extending people's lives, yet we hardly spend any effort helping them afford those extra years.
It’s the problems we don’t talk about that should worry us most. And, by that measure, I’m less worried about the U.S. retirement crisis than I was a month ago.
In March, BlackRock hosted a retirement summit in Washington, D.C., bringing together Republicans and Democrats, asset managers and pension funds, small business owners, firefighters, teachers, union members, and farmers. It was an eclectic group, and that was the point. Good ideas can come from unexpected places. After all, the most important retirement program in U.S. history started as an op-ed from an unknown doctor in a tiny newspaper.
That same dynamic played out at the summit: We saw consensus around practical ideas to help more Americans start investing, grow their savings to hit their retirement goals, and confidently spend down what they've earned—so that Americans don’t have to fear running out of money, certainly not more than death itself…
Once people start investing for retirement, the goal is simple: make their money grow—as much as possible, as fast as possible.
In January, BlackRock surveyed Americans, asking how much money they'd need to retire comfortably. When we took the average of those responses, it was just over $2 million—$2,089,000, to be exact. That’s a lot. More than I was expecting. And almost no one is close. Even Gen-Xers, the oldest of whom will start retiring in five years, are falling short. In fact, 62% have saved less than $150,000.
We're going to need better ways to boost portfolios. As I wrote earlier, private assets like real estate and infrastructure can lift returns and protect investors during market downturns.
