2026 Infrastructure Summit

On March 11, 2026, BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a part of BlackRock, hosted the 2026 Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C., in partnership with Semafor. The event brought together policymakers, corporate executives, and labor leaders to discuss how the public and private sectors can collaborate to build the infrastructure America needs to maintain its global economic and technology leadership, while creating greater prosperity for more people.

The theme of the summit, “Building America’s Future Together: The Infrastructure Opportunity,” underscored how critical infrastructure is to economic growth and national security amid ongoing structural changes to the global economy and energy ecosystem. Aging infrastructure systems need to be modernized, supply chains are re-wiring, the economy is electrifying, and an AI-powered future requires a whole new set of digital infrastructure. Meeting this demand will require roughly $10 trillion of investment. At the same time, the United States must ensure that American workers are prepared to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs that will be created by the infrastructure buildout.

By convening leaders across sectors, the Infrastructure Summit underscored a simple but powerful idea: the future of American infrastructure depends on the same strengths that have turned the U.S. into the world’s largest economy – governments, companies, workers, and investors working together.

A Landmark Initiative

At the Infrastructure Summit, BlackRock announced Future Builders, a national $100 million philanthropic initiative to train workers for careers in skilled trades. Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, sat down with Mike Rowe, the CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, to discuss how skilled trades can offer well paid, resilient careers without requiring a traditional four year degree. They emphasized the importance of rethinking how young people, career switchers, and veterans are introduced to these opportunities—and how industry can partner more effectively with educators and nonprofits to retool training and certification.

What They Said

 “Infrastructure – “fix the damn roads” – is about affordability. It’s about the personal economy and about the economic writ large for a state.” – Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan

“There’s many hard parts of this business, but one of the hardest ones is the infrastructure. It’s so expensive, you need so much of it, and you have to commit so far in advance.” – Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer, OpenAI

“National security is a lot more than who has the most tanks, gunships, and planes. It is very much a technology based competition. And if all of those technology domains are part of our critical infrastructure, they’ve got to be in the bucket as well.” – Mark Warner, U.S. Senator from Virginia

“We have to do a better job in our partnerships. There's ways that maybe this audience thinks about opportunity that we're not thinking about.” – Sean Duffy, U.S. Secretary of Transportation

“The one thing that I think is undeniable is it is a game of energy addition… There’s no one size fits all on this. And I think the one thing that we’ve seen in this administration is encouraging investment across the energy spectrum to support our economy and our security.” – Mike Wirth, Chief Executive Officer, Chevron

“The workforce is retiring, especially in the skilled trades. Arithmetic is not on our side. The perceptions are not on our side. The need is clear and present and maybe existential. And that's why it's really exciting to see the grownups come together and say, all right, it's time. This is the year we close the gap.” – Mike Rowe, Chief Executive Officer, mikeroweWORKS Foundation

“We’re sitting here talking about critical minerals and battery storage and electrification. The transportation infrastructure in this country is just as important.” – Catherine Cortez Masto, U.S. Senator from Nevada

“I do think we have to reframe that question – that the dream is just to graduate from college. The dream is to have a great paying job.” – Dina Powell McCormick, President and Vice Chairman, Meta

“We have got to unleash energy in this country. We’ve got to do it quickly… And it’s incumbent upon companies in our sector to move quickly.” – John Ketchum, Chief Executive Officer, NextEra

“This is a very disruptive time. People are scared. People are scared of the risk of AI. What's it mean for their jobs? They're scared about these big data centers showing up in their backyards. And I think generally speaking, the industry and those of us in public life have done a terrible job of talking about what that means.” – David McCormick, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania

“Now there's a new opportunity, and we call these folks that we're trying to attract the “infrastructure generation.” This is their turn, but we have to make it enticing and we have to make sure that they know that this isn't just a job, it's a career, it's a profession.” – Sean McGarvey, President, North America's Building Trades Unions

“We cannot microwave craftsman, journeyman ship. We have to create this. And that takes effort. It takes mentoring, it takes everything. But we know we have the tools to do it.” – David Long, Chief Executive Officer, National Electrical Contractors Association

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