Hitachi plans 150 jobs in Cary as US electricity, data center demands swell
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- Hitachi will open $10 million Cary facility in fall 2026 creating 150 jobs.
- Facility advances Hitachi’s $1 billion U.S. buildout of transformers for AI data centers.
- Voluntary White House pledge links data center development to utility rate caps
Swiss manufacturer Hitachi Energy is growing its Triangle footprint with a $10 million power electronics facility in Cary that promises to create 150 jobs as the supplier spends to support AI data centers.
“We all know right now that the world, in particular the United States, is seeing a huge growth in consumption of electricity,” Hitachi Energy chief commercial officer Anthony Allard said during a ceremony Thursday at the incoming site near NW Maynard Road. “And more and more countries, industries, and data centers are relying on electricity in order to be able to deliver economic value and safety.”
Headquartered in Zurich, Hitachi Energy — a subsidiary of the multinational Hitachi Ltd. — has its main North American office at North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus. It expects to open its Cary facility in the fall, part of a $1 billion U.S. spending commitment the company made last year to build more “transformers and high-voltage equipment” for artificial intelligence data centers.
The ceremony featured a Trump administration official and a Trump-backed candidate.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley both touted the administration’s energy policy while criticizing former President Joe Biden’s approach.
“Even though the previous administration tried very hard to kill the oil and gas industry, they were unsuccessful,” said Wright, a former CEO of the fracking services company Liberty Energy.
Whatley faces Democrat Roy Cooper, a former North Carolina governor, in November.
Can White House Rate Protection Pledge protect NC ratepayers?
The White House’s AI action plan calls for policies to accelerate construction of data centers, warehouse-like facilities that house servers for storage and computation. Data centers are considered essential to facilitating artificial intelligence; last year, the consulting firm McKinsey estimated global data center demand would nearly triple by 2030, mostly due to AI workloads.
Data centers consume considerable amounts of electricity and water, while employing relatively few workers given their energy usage, which has stoked resident fears across North Carolina and elsewhere over higher utility bills.
Speaking to reporters after his remarks, Wright said the Trump administration supports data center development “when done right.” On March 4, the White House released a Ratepayer Protection Pledge that calls on companies building data centers to voluntarily work out separate rate deals with local utility companies and governments to ensure household bills don’t rise.
In March, seven leading tech companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Oracle, OpenAI and xAI — signed the pledge. While cheered as a positive step by some, others have noted the federal voluntary pledge still leaves binding negotiations to states and their local utility companies.
