"It doesn't seem intuitively obvious why a state would be here," JP Nauseef, CEO of JobsOhio, told me this month at CES, the world’s largest technology showcase.
"But there are very few trade shows with global reach that intersect with our industry sectors. This is where inventors and small town entrepreneurs come to promote their products, to make deals."
Case in point ...
I watched Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey – the face of defense tech's insurgent moment – get mobbed for selfies like a rockstar.
But there was one person Luckey stopped to greet on his own: Nauseef, the man who helped land Anduril's hyperscale manufacturing operation in Ohio last year in the state's largest job-creation project ever.
Why It Matters: Place matters to the companies building American industry. And as AI, reshoring, and reindustrialization drive hundreds of billions of dollars into everything from mineral extraction to data centers to power grids to advanced manufacturing, America's states and regions are competing to host this investment.
The latest front in this competition was CES – where 10 U.S. states and regions, along with over a dozen foreign countries – worked to stake their claim to the new industrial map.
We were there to cover it.
🎲 Place your bets.
Zach Silber
Editor-in-Chief
Standard & Works
1. 🚜 America’s Physical AI Layer
Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed delivers his CES Keynote
The tech world talks about the cloud like it floats.
But as Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed reminded a crowd of thousands: it doesn't.
“Every device in this room depends on minerals that had to be pulled from the ground,” Creed said during the company’s CES keynote.
“Every data center behind the AI you're going to see this week was constructed from the ground up. Every road, every port, every power line connecting our economy had to be built.”
Creed called this the invisible layer of the modern tech stack, the physical foundation for modern technology.
You don't think of Caterpillar as consumer tech.
But this year they showed up at CES with a keynote, new NVIDIA partnership, and zip code-sized booth to make one thing clear: the invisible layer doesn't happen without Caterpillar’s yellow machines.
For states and regions, hosting this layer is the prize.
2. 🌊 The Ohio Tidal Wave
JobsOhio’s standing-room-only Future of Manufacturing panel at the Las Vegas Convention Center
It’s nearly impossible to make a splash at CES. But one state made a tidal wave.
You could not move through CES without encountering Ohio. The convention center was wrapped in the pitch.
"They're everywhere," I overheard a competitor state remark.
The saturation was air cover. The real play was a standing-room-only panel where Nauseef sat alongside three modern industrialists:
Nuclear: Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte
Electric aviation: Joby CEO JoeBen Bevirt
Manufacturing systems: Atomic Industries CEO Aaron Slodov
Also onstage: The Ohio State University’s President, Admiral Ted Carter – a decorated military and education leader.
Nauseef was blunt about the exercise:
"Three of the four panelists are not from Ohio. They chose to put their business here. That's the message."
This wasn't a vanilla trade show panel – it was a live proof of concept.
Just before the panelists took the stage, news broke back in Dayton: Joby was adding 730,000 square feet of manufacturing, doubling its capacity.
We asked Joby's CEO JoeBen Bevirt why his company had chosen Ohio over everybody else – twice:
"It's all about workforce, manufacturing talent, quality of life – Ohio brings all those together," he told me.
DeWitte also made news, announcing he and Oklo would make a multimillion-dollar contribution to Ohio State to stand up a nuclear engineering program. OSU's Carter said he can get it done in 18 months.
"Ohio is primed to be a significant nuclear ecosystem hub," DeWitte said. "Not just reactors, but fuel production, manufacturing, fabrication. You build the power and it enables you to attract all of that."
Forty-eight hours later, the power arrived: Oklo announced a 1.2 gigawatt nuclear power deal with Meta in Southern Ohio.
In one week, Ohio locked in workforce and energy – two linchpins of America's nuclear future that put Ohio at the center of it.
3. ⚡ The Industrial Hubs
The Michigan-backed Centrepolis accelerator brought a fleet of mobility companies to CES
"In the high-speed world of CES, outcomes that usually take months—supply-chain partnerships, talent recruitment, site expansion decisions—are being compressed into a matter of days." – Ben Pratt of the Allegheny Conference in a Pittsburgh Business Times op-ed
Ohio’s next-door neighbors were also in Las Vegas:
Pittsburgh — The Pittsburgh Regional Alliance and Pittsburgh Technology Council are in their second year at CES. Their signature event is a tailgate that’s proven successful at incubating global relationships. Pittsburgh also convened a panel on sustainable data centers that flexed regional muscle from Westinghouse, AWS, Exus Renewables, and Synopsys. The message: Pittsburgh is ready to solve the thorniest challenges of the AI build-out.
Michigan — The State of Michigan-backed Centrepolis Accelerator occupied prime real estate at the show’s North Hall entrance – a 10x larger footprint than it took last year. Riley Lenhard filled it with a fleet of mobility companies. At Centrepolis, they get access to rapid prototyping and over 50 experts in residence. Lenhard said his CES exhibitors were making tons of new contacts for capital and customers.
4. 🏭 Nevada: From Gaming to Gigafactory
Gov. Joe Lombardo (NV) on a CES panel on January 8th
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."
5. ☀ The Sunbelt
SelectFlorida’s booth at the Venetian Expo Center
Despite demographic tailwinds, two sunbelt states weren't resting on their laurels.
Florida – SelectFlorida brought a team ready to triage any opportunity on the spot: regional affiliates from across the state, Space Florida as the conduit to the aerospace industry, and a Florida Power & Light rep underscoring that power is table stakes for any project today. A theme that kept coming up during our stop at their booth: Florida’s statewide advantages.
Arizona – The Arizona Commerce Authority used CES to announce a new AI venture studio backed by LG's North America Innovation Center. The focus: healthcare, energy, and sports – with investor Sunny Day Sports bringing a sports medicine and fem-tech angle tied to a new sports and innovation district in Mesa.
At Phoenix’s booth, I met Ryan Touhill, the city’s new Community and Economic Development Director. Previously, Touhill held key economic development roles in Northern Virginia, including during Amazon HQ2's national search.
We talked shop and looked over site maps of Halo Vista, the massive “city within a city” development surrounding TSMC's semiconductor plant in Phoenix.
Halo Vista is 2,300 acres surrounding TSMC in Phoenix being developed to attract companies and talent
6. 🧊 Alaska: The Long Game
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy onstage at CES
Governor Mike Dunleavy flew five hours to Las Vegas to learn about everything from wearables to drones – technologies that make Alaska's isolation and 225+ off-road communities a perfect proving ground.
He also came to sell Alaska as the data center capital of the future: fiber routes converging on Anchorage, 150 volcanoes for geothermal, energy at 5-7 cents per kilowatt hour, abundant water, and vast tracts of land.
I’ve spoken with two leading site selectors who buy the pitch.
Go Deeper:
📁 Read our briefing: “Alaska: Looking North to the Future”
🎙 Watch our interview with Gov. Dunleavy
7. 📸 One for the Road
Our CES crash course called for a Standard & Works hardhat
The cloud is coming down to earth.
The states that move fastest on energy, workforce, and speed-to-market are planting flags in America's physical layer.
That's the competition we're here to cover at Standard & Works.
Thanks for coming along with us.
