Who Is The Single Biggest Data Center Investor In Congress?

0:00Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want.

0:37Like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot. And turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today.

1:01Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me once again is my Forbes colleague, reporter Kyle Kahn-Mullins. Kyle, thanks so much for coming on.

1:11Kyle Khan-Mullins: Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks for having me. Recent polling shows that there's been growing bipartisan discontent when it comes to the construction of data centers. And those criticisms are coming at a time when people inside the AI industry have been sounding the alarm on the technology safety risks. A former researcher who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic recently warned about AI's potential to, quote, kill us all. That's what he said. And leaders of some of the frontier companies are saying, hey, we need some guardrails here because this technology, it has the potential to pose a real existential threat to humanity.

1:46But you're reporting that some members of Congress could get rich off data centers. So to start off the conversation, could you walk us through the process of how you found out who in Congress has the most to gain and lose financially from data centers?

2:01Kyle Khan-Mullins: Absolutely, Brittany. We really started with a basic question. The data center build out, it's transforming the US economy, it's transforming US politics, maybe it'll kill us all, who knows. We wanted to know which politicians are potentially benefiting from the data center build out or who would get hurt if the boom became a bust. Politicians have to disclose their investments in ranges in financial disclosure documents that are public. So we can see if a politician owns, say, between$15 ,000 and$50 ,000, that's one of the ranges, of stock in, say, NVIDIA, the big chip maker. And that includes things that the politician owns, that their spouse owns, and any dependent children owns.

2:41Kyle Khan-Mullins: So remember that when we're talking about all these figures that we're going to get into, we're talking about kind of the household, not just the individual lawmaker. So what we did is we downloaded all of the most recent disclosures for every member of Congress and then we've also downloaded any reports that they filed more recently showing more recent transactions. And ironically here, we used AI to scrape all of those disclosures for any investment that might remotely be related to data centers. And from there, I reviewed all of the candidate investments myself to help determine which companies we should actually include in the analysis.

3:15Kyle Khan-Mullins: We kind of threw it all into a spreadsheet. That's how we got our rankings. And I should say our rankings are calculated using the bottom of the ranges. So that$15 ,000 to$50 ,000 range I quoted before, the rankings would be calculated using the$15 ,000 range. So AI helped you streamline this process. You've reviewed it. You threw it on the spreadsheet. I want to talk about exactly what you found here. Break down the numbers a little bit. How many members of Congress have data center linked investments? And overall, how much money are they pouring into these companies? Yeah. So I published an analysis of the Senate earlier this week.

3:52Kyle Khan-Mullins: And so people can go read that. What we're talking about today is just the House of Representatives. And the House is a lot bigger than the Senate. 435 members, the Senate's got 100, right? We count hundreds of lawmakers in the House with data center adjacent investments. And we count at least $45 million worth of those investments across the whole House. And remember, that's the minimum. So the number's probably a lot higher than that. But our analysis really focused on the House, really focused for the House on the biggest investors. We really honed in on the top five to 10 for our for our main coverage here.

4:27In your piece, you cite this letter that was signed by over 100 members of the House. The overwhelming majority of them were Democrats, but a handful of Republicans signed on this letter that was dated September 18th. It was addressed to tech industry leaders, and it was talking about data centers. You cited it. I want to read how it began in part, quote, we that undersigned members of the United States Congress demand the industry adoption of key standards and practices around data center development. Should you fall short of these standards and fail to provide anything other than a safe and direct benefit for the communities that house these data centers, we will reject their construction.

5:05And you pointed out there was a somewhat ironic signer of this letter. It's former House Speaker, and she's actually the biggest data center investor in all of the House. Talk to us a little bit about Nancy Pelosi's investments. Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at Progressive.com.

5:45Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers not available in all states. when it's time to scale your business it's time for shopify get everything you need to grow the way you want like all the way stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet track your cha-chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities take your business to a whole new level switch to shopify start your free trial today.

6:18Kyle Khan-Mullins: Yeah, not just top in the House. Nancy Pelosi is actually the top data center investor in all of Congress. All five of the top House members that we counted for this story, all five of the House members are above the top five senators that I examined in a previous story. So all the people we're talking about today are the top five in all of Congress. And Pelosi's investments, you asked about hers. I should say those are listed as owned and managed by her husband on her financial disclosures. They're not listed as hers. They include purchases as recent as this year. Paul Pelosi was buying millions of dollars worth of stock and options in Intel, which is an American chip company.

6:56Kyle Khan-Mullins: In Bloom Energy, they make fuel cells that power data centers. The biggest holding in their portfolio is a stake in NVIDIA, the big chip company, big chip maker. Their worth, that stake in NVIDIA, is worth between$6 and$26 million. dollars. That's a lot of money. And while we're talking about Nancy Pelosi, I do want to stay on the left here. And if you could talk to us a little bit about those other Democratic members of the House who are investing the most in these types of companies, who are they and what do their holdings look like? So the runner up number two, this is Cleo Fields, Representative Cleo Fields.

7:34Kyle Khan-Mullins: He's a Democrat from Louisiana. He's actually retiring this year. He got gerrymandered out of his seat. He disclosed a stake in NVIDIA. Again, this is the$5 trillion market cap company. Their computer chips kind of power all of the data centers that we operate or the vast majority of them. His overall share data center adjacent investments are between eight and a half and $41 million. Seven to 35 of that is just his stake in NVIDIA. He also owns some stakes in the Taiwanese chip maker TSMC, the American chip designer AMD. So he's got this breadth of portfolio but a big chunk of it is Nvidia. The other two Democrats, you asked about the other Democrats in the top five, there's two more.

8:16Kyle Khan-Mullins: One is Long Island Democrat Tom Suozzi. He's got data center investments that are between two and a quarter and ten and a half million. And then Los Angeles area Democrat Gil Cisneros, his holdings are worth between 2.2 and 9.4 million. They both also got big stakes in Nvidia, probably noticing a pattern here. Nvidia showing up in all the Democrats portfolios. Cisneros, I think is interesting. He owns shares in companies that sort of illustrate the breadth of the data center boom. Caterpillar shares are up 300 % in five years. Parker Hannafin, they make liquid cooling equipment, other heat management stuff.

8:49Kyle Khan-Mullins: They're up 225%. Cisneros owns between 15 and$50 ,000 of both of those companies. And now obviously we got to turn to the right. Let's talk Republicans. Do their investments look the same? I know Nvidia is a trend here. Who are the Republicans with the most data center linked assets? So in the house and in Congress overall, there's only one Republican in our top five. That's San Diego area Republican, Darrell Issa. He earned his high rank on the list with a single investment holding. He owns an ETF. It's the iShares semiconductor ETF, and it's worth between five and$25 million. That's it. That's his only holding.

9:27Kyle Khan-Mullins: We actually didn't count most pooled fund vehicles for this analysis, ETFs, you know, that kind of thing, index funds. We didn't count the vast majority of them because we didn't feel it would be nice to say, or fair to say, you know, oh, you own the S &P 500 and the S &P 500 has some NVIDIA in it, so therefore you're a data center investor. That doesn't make any sense. But this one, this one's pretty, pretty direct. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, all of its largest holdings are data center adjacent. Intel, AMD, Micron, NVIDIA, Broadcom. These are all companies. They're in the top part of the CTF and they're all data center adjacent.

10:03Kyle Khan-Mullins: So we counted this for the purposes of our analysis. I know a few moments ago, I did cite that letter that included Nancy Pelosi's signature that essentially put tech industry leaders on notice about data centers. But do we know how other lawmakers feel about data centers? And if Nancy Pelosi has said anything publicly? Because like I said at the top, polling shows that Americans, the vast majority of them oppose data centers and their construction. Are these lawmakers publicly at least voicing any concerns about them? You can kind of see a partisan split developing on this issue. So Republicans for the most part, and I'm speaking very broadly here, are kind of full steam ahead on data centers.

10:46Kyle Khan-Mullins: They are an opportunity for jobs. They're an opportunity for economic growth. They want to support AI. That's an industry the president has embraced, and that's an industry that's very closely tied with the Republican Party at this point. But Republicans do still show favoring some regulation, especially on electricity prices. Democrats, on the other hand, and again, I'm speaking very broadly here, more concerned about the build-out. They're not anti-data center completely, although almost everyone who is anti-data center is on the Democratic side. But most Democrats, they want more transparency and they want more regulation when it comes to water consumption, electricity consumption.

11:21Kyle Khan-Mullins: They want more local input on whether a data center is built in a particular place. They want fewer tax breaks for the construction of those data centers. They want strong labor laws for the workers who are building the data centers, all that kinds of stuff. Those are the things that Democrats tend to be talking about. I've talked with lawmakers. I've also talked with people generally about what they view as a need to ban congressional stock trading because they view it as a real conflict of interest. I have to ask the question again, is this a conflict of interest? Because you see these lawmakers in the house investing millions and millions of dollars in these types of companies that they have the power to make laws regulating.

12:02What do you think of that?

12:04Kyle Khan-Mullins: That is the multi-trillion dollar question. You know, the lawmakers who replied to my request for comment, they are all strenuously denying that their investments have anything to do with their votes and anything to do with their actions as members of Congress. Some of them, their investments are held by their spouse or they're held by independent wealth advisors or they're managed, I should say, by independent wealth advisors. And they say that gives them some distance. I talk money with my wife all the time. So that's kind of in the eye of the beholder there. And yeah, a lot of the, some of the lawmakers that we're talking about even support a congressional stock trading ban.

12:37Kyle Khan-Mullins: They would say, yeah, if it If it came on the floor of the House, I would vote for it. But as long as it's not in place, they still own stocks. One of the lawmakers in the top 10, not in the top five, Representative Morrison, I think, from Minnesota, she noted she's in the process of divesting. She's a freshman lawmaker, and she's noted that she's in the process of divesting all of her stocks. So she owns data center adjacent investments, but soon maybe she won't anymore. She's still in the process there. So we've got a range of viewpoints, but basically everyone says this has nothing to do with how I'm voting or how I'm thinking about my own personal finances.

13:15Our conversations always live on the intersection of money and politics. That's your bread and butter. That's what you report on. So I'm curious, what does this story, through the collage and perspective of all of your reporting, what does it tell you? You found out you uncovered lawmakers investing millions of dollars in this data center boom. What is this telling you?

13:34Kyle Khan-Mullins: I think there are two sort of two big lessons I drew from this reporting. The first thing is there's just a lot of potential in using AI, again somewhat ironically here, to sift through all of the vast amount of data on these disclosures. This is a little bit inside baseball, but I could not have done this reporting just by reading all the disclosures one by one by myself. This was made possible because of some automated filtering and automated transcribing of these disclosures. Some of these disclosures are handwritten. Some of these disclosures are very dense and scanned and they're hard to parse.

14:12Kyle Khan-Mullins: And so being able to sort of trade off, the AI is much better at reading just straight text. It can read it much faster than I can. I'm much better at reading handwriting. Between the two, we're able to work together a little bit and get this reporting done. And the second thing I've really pulled, this whole reporting process underscored for me how big the AI data center build out really is. So many companies are impacted by it that you wouldn't even remotely expect, at least by, you know, your first thought. If you take Caterpillar, you know, they make construction equipment. You're like, okay, yeah, they probably are, you know, they're probably doing all right.

14:46Kyle Khan-Mullins: You know, you're building data centers, you need construction equipment to do that. Caterpillar is up 300 % their shares in five years. That's crazy. And they don't make chips, they don't make software, or anything like that, they are up in large part because of the data center build out, because that is how valuable and how extensive this build out is in the U.S. economy. I appreciate you crunching the numbers here, reporting on them, and having that discussion with me. Kyle Connmullins, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on. Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks again.

15:55We'll see you next time. Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.