Donald Trump’s $92b plan to beat China in global AI race

Donald Trump has unveiled a $92 billion plan to fuel the AI boom and beat its rival China. See how Australia and the rest of the world are also entering the artificial intelligence race.

US President Donald Trump has unveiled $92 billion in energy and infrastructure deals intended to meet big tech’s soaring demand for electricity to fuel the AI boom.

Trump made the announcement at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, with much of the talk about beating China in the global AI race.

“Today’s commitments are ensuring that the future is going to be designed, built and made right here in Pennsylvania and right here in Pittsburgh, and I have to say, right here in the United States of America,” Trump said.

The tech world has fully embraced generative AI as the next wave of technology, but fears are growing that its massive electricity needs cannot be met by current infrastructure, particularly in the United States.

President Donald Trump has a new way to beat China in the AI race. Picture: AP

Generative AI requires enormous computing power, mainly to run the energy-hungry processors from Nvidia, the California-based company that has become the world’s most valuable company by market capitalisation.

Officials expect that by 2028, tech companies will need as much as five gigawatts of power for AI — enough electricity to power roughly five million homes.

Among investments, Google committed $25 billion to build AI-ready data centres in Pennsylvania and surrounding regions.

“We support President Trump’s clear and urgent direction that our nation invest in AI … so that America can continue to lead in AI,” said Ruth Porat, Google’s president and chief investment officer.

Google also announced a partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to modernise two hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania, representing 670MW of capacity on the regional grid.

Investment group Blackstone pledged more than $25 billion to fund new data centres and energy infrastructure.

US Senator David McCormick said the investments “are of enormous consequence to Pennsylvania, but they are also crucial to the future of the nation.”

“We are way ahead of China and the plants are starting up, the construction is starting up,” Trump said.

The US president launched the “Stargate” project in January, aimed at investing up to $500 billion in US AI infrastructure — primarily in response to growing competition with China.

Here is how Australia and other nations are getting in on the AI race.

AUSTRALIA

Tech giant Amazon has pledged $A20 billion to expand data centre infrastructure in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as three solar farms in Victoria and Queensland to help power them.

The five-year funding pledge will expand Amazon Web Services, building the nation’s AI capabilities.

This comes after the NSW government launched the Investment Delivery Authority which will accelerate approvals for major projects and the federal government’s national AI plan.

Most data centres in Australia will use the nation’ electrical grid for energy, meaning it will be Australian ratepayers who will have to absorb the mark ups as energy demand increases.

There are currently 308 data centres in Australia mostly along the east coast, according to Cloudscene.

Tech leader Firmus is also creating a green way to power AI in Tasmania with its platform set to become one of the most sustainable AI facilities in the world.

“Producing these AI tokens in Tasmania will create a new type of green AI token — clean and powered by renewables — enabling AI to scale sustainably,” Firmus co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield said.

USA

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg just announced that the social media giant will build a mega data-centre that will rival the size of Manhattan.

Mr Zuckerberg said Meta will invest billions of dollars to build huge data centres in the US, including a first multi-gigawatt centre called Prometheus – which is expected to be completed in 2026.

The US hosts the most data centres in the world with a whopping 5,425 as of March 2025.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: AFP

Ireland

Ireland followed a similar approach to the AI boom that Australia is now taking, embracing data centres as a boost for the economy.

The sprawling data centres around the outskirts of Dublin use more electricity than all the urban homes in Ireland and fears of rolling blackouts have halted new data centres until 2028.

Data centres in Ireland used 21 per cent of the nation’s electricity, with no other country reporting a higher burden to the National Energy Agency.

China

It has recently been reported that China is constructing massive AI data centres powered by at least 115,000 Nvidia chips.

These chips are set to power 36 to 39 data centres placed throughout China’s western regions for easy access to abundant natural resources and the cooler high-altitude-climate to reduce water usage.

This comes after China’s $6.1 billion commitment over two years to build AI infrastructure, TikTok parent company Byteance initiating a $614 million AI data centre in Shanxi province, and hundreds of other data centres China built to expand its AI infrastructure from 2023 to

2024.

President and CEO of Nvidia Corporation Jensen Huang. Picture: AP

Germany

Germany leads Europe in terms of AI data centres, with a group of German companies collaborating together to build more centres under the European Unions AI gigafactories initiative.

Deutsche Telekom, lobos, and SAP are among the German companies striving to bridge the gap between Europe’s AI capabilities with superpowers like the US and China.

The EU supported AI data centre initiative seeks to build three to five gigafactories within the region, each housing about 100,000 AI chips.

UK

The UK government has just announced 14 billion pounds investment into a new AI action plan which seeks to encourage more data centres being built to increase the nation’s technological capacity.

Data centres are designated as critical national infrastructure in the UK in a bid to lessen red tape. There are currently more than 500 active data centres in the UK.

Singapore

Singapore has become a leading AI data‑centre hub in Southeast Asia, with firms like Equinix and Alibaba Cloud investing in AI‑ready, sustainable centres to meet regional demand.

Canada

Canada is rapidly expanding AI compute infrastructure, including a $4.45 billion Beacon AI campus in Alberta and federally funded multi‑billion‑dollar centres supporting start-ups like Cohere.

France

France is fast-tracking its AI ambitions with a planned 1 GW AI data‑centre campus near Paris, backed by about $38-95 billion in combined public and private investment.

UAE

Through sovereign fund MGX, the UAE is investing up to in a flagship 1 GW AI campus in France.

Israel

Israel has offered multiple potential sites for Nvidia to expand its operations, and meet the growing demand for AI data centres in the region, as recently reported.

Malaysia

Alibaba Cloud is bolstering AI data‑centre capacity in Malaysia alongside Singapore and the Philippines.

Data centres are also in Brazil, Chile, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, India, Japan, Thailand, South Africa and Indonesia – among others.

Originally published as Donald Trump’s $92b plan to beat China in global AI race