Nvidia CEO tells college grads that electricians, plumbers and iron workers have a leg up – and there’s no degree needed

When Jensen Huang showed up at Carnegie Mellon, the Nvidia CEO used his commencement address to the class of 2026 to make a case for a very different kind of career: one that requires a hard hat, not a laptop.

“AI gives America the opportunity to build again,” Huang told the assembled crowd in Pittsburgh. “Electricians, plumbers, iron workers, technicians, builders — this is your time. AI is not just creating a new computing industry; it is creating a new industrial era (1).”

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It’s a striking message to deliver at one of the country’s top computer science and engineering universities (2). But the data suggests Huang is onto something, and for anyone weighing their career options, the numbers are hard to ignore.

The AI buildout runs on human hands

The scale of infrastructure being built to power artificial intelligence is staggering. Fortune reports that capital spending from the largest U.S. tech companies could hit $700 billion this year alone, driven by data center construction and the infrastructure needed to train and deploy AI models (3).

Worldwide, McKinsey projected the data center boom could generate close to $7 trillion in investment by 2030 (4).

None of that gets built without people swinging hammers, pulling wire and laying pipe.

Randstad’s March analysis of more than 150 million U.S. job postings found that demand for skilled trades is now growing three times faster than for professional desk-based roles (5).