The official opening public land to data centres has up to $64.4mn invested in AI companies

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum holds between $18.1mn and $64.4mn in AI companies through Arthur Ventures, the investment firm he co-founded, according to an analysis of his 2026 disclosure. He resigned his positions at the firm under his ethics agreement but retained the investments. At the same time, Burgum has become the administration’s lead advocate for using federal land and energy resources to expand AI infrastructure, describing competition with China as an existential “AI arms race.”

The policy power is material. A US Geological Survey review identified at least 91.3mn acres managed by Interior—roughly the area of Montana—as potentially suitable for data centres. The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing about 15 data-centre applications and 17 related infrastructure projects across six western states. Unlike many state and local approvals, federal siting can reduce the ability of nearby communities to contest water, power and environmental effects.

ProPublica does not establish a criminal conflict. Federal law generally requires a much more specific decision involving a company in which an official has a substantial interest, and ethics specialists said Burgum’s sector-wide investments appear permissible under that statute. Interior says he has satisfied all disclosure and ethics obligations and that suggestions his decisions are personally motivated are unsupported. The harder issue is the non-criminal rule against participating in matters that create an appearance of conflict. Former White House ethics lawyers told ProPublica that an official with these holdings should recuse.

The investigation also shows why the sector-wide framing matters. More than 380 Trump appointees or their spouses have financial connections to Nvidia, more than 320 to Alphabet and more than 240 to Meta. BLM director Steve Pearce disclosed holdings in major AI firms and kept an investment in a developer involved in southwestern data-centre land acquisitions. Agriculture undersecretary Michael Boren reported up to $500,000 in Valar Atomics, which is promoting a Utah data-centre complex powered by hundreds of small reactors on BLM land. The agencies say the officials comply with applicable rules.

Even the public return remains unsettled. Oil producers pay royalties and solar plants pay per-megawatt fees; Interior currently expects data centres chiefly to pay fair-market rent under a 1976 land-management statute that never contemplated them. The result is an asymmetry: officials and private investors can already anticipate gains, while the rent, water obligations, power costs and environmental protections owed to the public will be determined project by project. Disclosure makes the interests visible. It does not resolve who should make those decisions.