The Lowe’s Foundation has launched a coalition aiming to train 1 million new skilled trades workers by 2035. The corporate roster is the interesting part: Nvidia, AT&T, Bank of America, Carrier, General Motors, DEWALT and Duke Energy, with more than 75 member firms behind it.
The Building Futures Skilled Trades Coalition also pulls in the National Association of Home Builders, the National Center for Construction Education and Research, SkillsUSA and Carhartt.
Why chipmakers and utilities are funding trades training
Nvidia isn’t in this out of civic feeling, and neither is Duke Energy. Both need data centers built and energized, and both keep hitting the same wall as everyone else. Associated Builders and Contractors put the 2026 shortfall at nearly 350,000 workers needed just to keep pace with current demand.
The pattern is familiar by now. Meta created the American Workforce Academy in June, a $115 million program offering free skilled-trades training aimed at data center work. Google followed with $50 million for labor unions and construction associations, targeting 300,000 workers across 20 states. That’s $165 million committed this summer, per Construction Dive, by two companies that don’t build anything themselves.
What the coalition actually commits to
Three things: changing how trades careers are perceived, scaling training methods that already work, and building measurement that tracks people from training into employment.
The third one is where programs like this usually break. Announcing a training target is easy. Following a trainee from a pre-apprenticeship seat to a W-2 two years later takes data-sharing across employers, training providers and unions that most of them have never attempted. If the coalition delivers that piece, the measurement will be worth more than the money.
“The next industrial revolution won’t be built by algorithms alone. It will be built by the millions of skilled trade professionals who power, connect and move this country forward,” said Marvin Ellison, Lowe’s chairman and CEO, in the announcement.
A scale check on the target
One million over nine years works out to about 111,000 a year. Against ABC’s 350,000-a-year shortfall, the coalition covers under a third even if it hits the number exactly. That’s less a criticism of the target than a measure of the hole.
And programs at this scale live or die on seat capacity, not on funding announcements. Exchange has covered smaller rounds where demand ran well past supply: a Halifax sheet metal pre-apprenticeship drew 87 applications for 12 seats. Interest in the trades isn’t usually the binding constraint. Instructors, shop space and a confirmed job at the end of it are.