NABTU, BlackRock, and AI Infrastructure Partnership Launch Strategic Collaboration to Support America's Infrastructure Workforce
Washington, DC, Aug. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), BlackRock, and the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support the growth of domestic infrastructure, expand workforce participation opportunities, strengthen supply chain resilience, and foster long-term economic development associated with AI and energy infrastructure investment.
Through the MOU, AIP’s anticipated project pipeline will provide visibility to improve planning for future workforce needs. The parties will also explore opportunities that expand apprenticeship utilization, strengthen workforce training, build more recruitment initiatives, and better ensure viable long-term, family-sustaining career pathways.
As data consumption accelerates, the corresponding growth in data centers, power generation, and related infrastructure investment is expected to create hundreds of thousands of high-quality jobs for skilled American workers. Developing the workforce needed to meet that demand requires dialogue among investors, labor organizations, policymakers, companies, and other industry participants. The collaboration between NABTU, BlackRock, and AIP will expand the long-term pipeline of skilled workers and strengthen project execution at data centers and other infrastructure being developed by AIP portfolio companies.
“NABTU is proud to partner with BlackRock and AIP to help build the skilled workforce that will power America’s data revolution,” said Sean McGarvey, President of NABTU. “As we’ve said, there is no shortage of men and women ready to build America’s future; what is needed is the workforce planning, industry partnerships, and sustained investment required to connect people with world-class training and family-sustaining careers.”
“As technology and data become increasingly important to U.S. economic growth, the infrastructure buildout required to drive innovation is creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in American workers,” said Larry Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock. “For America to continue to prosper, the men and women building the infrastructure of the future must also benefit from this growth. This collaboration reflects a shared belief that investing in critical infrastructure can strengthen America's competitiveness while creating jobs, expanding economic opportunity and, ultimately, help more Americans experience financial well-being.”
“Strategic access to NABTU’s highly trained workforce is a competitive advantage,” added Will Brilliant, Chief Executive Officer of AIP and Global Head of Digital Infrastructure at Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a part of BlackRock. “This relationship will bolster AIP and our companies’ ability to deliver mission-critical infrastructure projects with the scale, speed, and quality needed to generate strong outcomes for our clients. It will also help more Americans, and their families, benefit from the historic investments in American infrastructure.”
In addition, the MOU acknowledges that skilled contractors operating under a Responsible Contractor Program can contribute to greater execution certainty, better workplace safety, and improved operational reliability and that having a project labor agreement may be appropriate for certain projects.
Today’s announcement builds on BlackRock’s commitment to strengthening America’s skilled labor pipeline, which is critical to both the nation’s infrastructure buildout and to expanding economic opportunity. In March, BlackRock launched BlackRock Future Builders, a $100 million philanthropic initiative funded by The BlackRock Foundation to help train 50,000 Americans for careers in the skilled trades. The firm also joined Carhartt, Ford Motor Company, and Google in launching the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, a new initiative bringing together like-minded companies to expand access to skilled trades training and help meet the nation’s growing workforce needs.
BlackRock and AIP will apply the principles laid out in the nonbinding MOU in a manner that is consistent with their fiduciary duty to clients.
###
About NABTU
North America’s Building Trades Unions is an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry collectively representing over 3.2 million skilled craft professionals in the United States and Canada. Each year, our unions and signatory contractor partners invest in excess of $3 billion in private-sector money to fund and operate over 1,900 apprenticeship training and education facilities across North America that produce the safest, most highly trained, and most productive, skilled craft workers anywhere in the world. NABTU is dedicated to creating economic security and employment opportunities for its construction workers by safeguarding wage and benefits standards, promoting responsible private capital investments, investing in renowned apprenticeship and training, and creating more construction career pathways to the middle class for women, communities of color, Indigenous people, veterans, and the justice-involved. For more information, please visit nabtu.org.
About BlackRock
BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate | Twitter: @blackrock | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock
About AIP
The AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP) was established to accelerate investment in next-generation AI infrastructure and advance the innovation needed to power the future of AI. AIP aims to mobilize $30 billion of equity capital from investors, asset owners, and corporations, with the potential to reach $100 billion including debt financing.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, including with respect to AIP’s future financial or business performance, strategies or expectations. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words or phrases such as “trend,” “potential,” “opportunity,” “pipeline,” “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “current,” “intention,” “estimate,” “position,” “assume,” “outlook,” “continue,” “remain,” “maintain,” “sustain,” “seek,” “achieve,” and similar expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “may” and similar expressions.
Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which change over time and may contain information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections and forecasts. There is no guarantee that any projections or forecasts made will come to pass. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and BlackRock assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements and future results could differ materially from historical performance.
BlackRock has previously disclosed risk factors in its Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) reports. These risk factors and those identified elsewhere in this release, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements or historical performance. BlackRock’s Annual Reports on Form 10–K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and subsequent filings with the SEC, accessible on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and on BlackRock’s website, discuss certain of these factors in more detail and identify additional factors that can affect forward–looking statements. The information contained on BlackRock’s website is not a part of this press release, and therefore, is not incorporated herein by reference.
Betsy Barrett North America's Building Trades Unions 202-756-4623 bbarrett@nabtu.org Ed Sweeney Blackrock ed.sweeney@blackrock.com
© Copyright Globe Newswire, Inc. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Globe Newswire, Inc.
