The Trump administration has sought to open the floodgates for the AI industry, supporting America’s tech giants as they seek to drastically scale up their AI businesses and wed artificial intelligence to every aspect of American life. This industrial boom has been accompanied by a gold rush for the data center industry—which provides the cloud services that support many generative AI applications and platforms. Data centers are being built all over the country and, just as the government supports this endeavor, the sons of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are said to be making money from it.
That news comes from a recent article published by the New York Times, which discusses the business relationship between 29-year-old Kyle Lutnick and 27-year-old Brandon Lutnick and an AI business, Fermi America. In July, Kyle Lutnick toured a property in Texas where Fermi means to build a new data center, the newspaper notes. There, he met with Fermi’s co-founder and CEO, billionaire Toby Neugebauer. The Lutnick sons both currently help run Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that their father ran for many years (he stepped down from his role at the company in order to become Trump’s Commerce Secretary). The Times notes that Cantor Fitzgerald has been “helping raise capital” for Fermi’s new data center and, in the process, has been “banking millions in fees.”
Not long ago, the Elder Lutnick got his picture taken with Neuberger as part of an event designed to celebrate a strategic partnership between Fermi and a Japanese company called Doosan Enerbility, described as the “largest global supplier of nuclear power plant components for the past 40 years.” The partnership, formalized through a memo of understanding, will “pursue broader collaboration across multiple projects and technology platforms in support of Fermi America’s long-term nuclear development strategy,” a press release reads.
Howard Lutnick’s role in the project that his sons are financially involved with is explained by the newspaper thusly:
This sequence of events — a son making money on a project his father is boosting as a federal official — has come up repeatedly since President Trump tapped Howard Lutnick to head the Commerce Department, according to an investigation by The New York Times. In that role, Mr. Lutnick has twisted the arms of American allies, dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects. At times, these tactics have created opportunities for his family’s clients to gain access to much-needed foreign capital, The Times found.
The Times’ also notes that “family’s companies operate in a wide range of industries, from cryptocurrencies to data centers, that overlap with Mr. Lutnick’s work in government.” These activities have raised concerns “among high-level staff members in the Commerce Department,” the Times writes, citing current and former officials. Gizmodo reached out to the Trump administration, Fermi America, and Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. for comment.
A White House spokesperson told the Times: “The fact of the matter is that the only special interest guiding Secretary Lutnick and the rest of the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
Trump’s support for the AI industry has been significant and consistent. In January, the White House announced the Stargate Project, designed to support the creation of “AI infrastructure” and data centers throughout the U.S. In July, the Trump administration also passed an executive order designed to accelerate federal permitting for data center construction. The government has also sought to modernize regulations and loosen red-tape for the nuclear industry, which the AI business sees as a critical resource in the race to master AI’s exorbitant energy footprint. In recent days, Trump also drafted an order that would allow the federal government to take action against states that try to introduce their own AI regulations.
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