Governor Joe Lombardo walked into CES on home turf and showed his cards:
"Some folks here in the audience are from economic development. Their task here is poaching people."
Onstage for a panel on state innovation, Lombardo was asked about Nevada's strengths.
"Well, first of all, we have a lot of convention space,” he said to laughs.
That explains why the world's biggest tech show is here. But Lombardo made clear Nevada has built beyond hospitality.
"We had all our eggs in one basket," Lombardo said. "Gaming was the mother's milk of the entire state."
Nevada's diversification into physical AI, including data centers and advanced manufacturing, rests on three core advantages.
Location: proximity to California and an inland port system.
Energy: Nevada is second only to California in geothermal capacity and one-third of its grid is powered by solar, offering sustainable power profiles to industry.
Partnership: Lombardo and Tom Burns, Executive Director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, both emphasized speed to market, nimbleness, and concierge-style hand-holding through permitting and regulatory processes.
"You're going to get to market ninety days, a hundred twenty, a hundred eighty days, one year earlier than you're going to get in other marketplaces," Burns told me in an interview.
Supporting these strengths are what Burns calls Nevada's "unfair advantages": 300 days of sunshine, 37 of the 60 critical minerals identified by the Department of Defense, and open space for testing drones and autonomous systems.
The proof-point it’s working:
"We didn't have anybody in advanced manufacturing 12 years ago," Burns told me. "Now there are 15,000 people going to work on February 1st at the Panasonic Tesla Gigafactory."
