Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is the Trump administration's point person on building out artificial intelligence. He is in charge of the department that manages most of the federal land the administration has offered to data centers. And he stands to gain from the industry he's helping.

ProPublica reported that much of Burgum's wealth sits in Arthur Ventures, an investment firm he co-founded. Between $18.1 million and $64.4 million of those investments are in AI companies, according to an analysis of the companies' marketing materials shared with ProPublica by the public lands group Save Our Parks. Financial disclosure forms only report wide ranges, which is why the number is so broad.

Burgum agreed to resign his positions at Arthur when he took the job. He did not agree to give up his financial interest in it.

The analysis also found that in 2025, he sold stocks and equity in AI companies and brought in capital gains of $2.5 million to $15.1 million.

"Any suggestion that his office decisions are driven by personal investments are false and completely unsupported," an Interior Department spokesperson told ProPublica. The department says he has met his ethics and disclosure obligations.

Why public land

Data centers have hit a wall of local opposition. People have fought them over water, power use and secret deals. Burgum himself was asked about a Fox News poll showing 70% of voters opposed to data centers. He answered by blaming "foreign influence" and "misinformation."

On local land, those objections can stop a project. ProPublica reports that on federal property, the public has less ability to do that.

So the administration has offered up federally managed public land, and most of it falls under Burgum. A U.S. Geological Survey report on siting data centers near energy infrastructure found 91.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land, an area comparable to Montana, within 10 miles of high-voltage power lines.

We've seen how fast this moves. Interior gave its state land directors three days to find public land for data centers.

This land belongs to all of us. Interior's job includes tribal affairs, national parks and dams across the West. But from January through November 2025, Burgum met with companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet more than 20 times, according to schedules compiled by the watchdog group Public Citizen.

'He has to recuse'

ProPublica's experts said Burgum's investments appear to be acceptable under the criminal law, which sets a high bar. That's worth being clear about: nobody is saying he committed a crime.

Ethics rules are a different matter. Those rules don't carry criminal penalties, but they tell officials to stay away from anything that would create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Cynthia Brown of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that would include Burgum backing data centers on federal land while holding AI investments.

Richard Painter was President George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer. He didn't hedge.

"I, as the ethics lawyer, would insist he stay away from it," Painter said. "In the Bush administration, the answer would've been 'he has to recuse,' I can guarantee you that."

Past Interior secretaries looked different. ProPublica found that Joe Biden's appointee, Deb Haaland, held no direct investments in companies her department regulated. Barack Obama's second appointee, Sally Jewell, agreed to sell her oil and gas stocks as a condition of being confirmed.

It goes well beyond Burgum

ProPublica's database of financial disclosures shows how far this reaches. It found 380 of Trump's political appointees or their spouses hold stocks or other financial ties to Nvidia. More than 320 have ties to Alphabet. More than 240 have ties to Meta.

Steve Pearce, who runs the Bureau of Land Management for Burgum, owned stock in Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and other AI-focused companies, according to his most recent public disclosure. He has pledged to divest many of his AI investments, but not his stake in Titan Development, a real estate company that has managed land deals for data centers in the Southwest.

Several Democratic senators wrote to Burgum in October demanding that he stop what they called efforts to "hijack public lands for the development of data centers." On Tuesday, voters across the country rejected data center projects again and again. The man deciding what happens on your public land has tens of millions of reasons to see it another way.

The short version

Doug Burgum leads the Trump administration's data center push and runs the department that oversees most of the federal land being offered for them. According to an analysis shared with ProPublica, between $18.1 million and $64.4 million of his investments in the firm he co-founded are in AI companies, and he kept his financial interest in that firm when he took office. Experts told ProPublica this appears legal under criminal law. A former top White House ethics lawyer said that in the Bush administration, he would have had to recuse himself.

Source

Trump Official Who Wants Data Centers on Public Lands Has Tens of Millions Invested in AI Industry — ProPublica