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Forbes Daily Briefing

How AI Data Centers Could Save California’s High-Speed Rail Project

Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

Careers, Business, News, Entrepreneurship

4.612 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trump is clawing back $4 billion, but new CEO Ian Choudri has a host of ideas — including leasing land for data centers to bring in more revenue — to pay for the costly project.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, August 15th. Today on Forbes, how AI data

0:07.8

centers could save California's high-speed rail project. With the clawing back of $4 billion

0:14.8

in federal grants to support it, the Trump administration seems hell-bent on ensuring that California's

0:20.8

high-speed rail project

0:21.9

ends up as precisely the, quote, train to nowhere, the president has lambasted it as.

0:28.5

Governor Gavin Newsom is suing to keep the money, but the train's new CEO has big ideas for

0:34.4

saving the priciest U.S. infrastructure project.

0:37.8

They include new long-term funding, private partnerships, and even turning to one of California's

0:43.3

newest so-called natural resources, the AI Data Center.

0:48.8

Ian Chowdry, who spent decades working on global mega-infrastructure projects for major engineering firms

0:54.7

Bechtel, Alstam, and Parsons, before taking the high-speed rail job last September,

1:00.3

is on a mission to convince skeptics that after years of slow progress, the Golden State's

1:05.4

bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles can be built, perhaps for less than its

1:10.8

$128 billion price tag, and even

1:13.7

without federal support.

1:16.3

Without providing financial details, he told Forbes, quote, we'll show that it becomes less

1:21.1

cumbersome on taxpayers because it's generating revenue.

1:26.0

In addition to future ride revenue, he thinks the system can make money

1:29.4

by letting tech firms build data centers on its land, powering them with solar farms that will

1:35.1

also propel its trains. Other ideas include selling the rights to telecom companies to lay

1:41.0

fiber-optic cable along the train's path, and promoting real estate development

1:45.0

projects on its route, particularly in the lower-priced Central Valley region.

...

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