Investor Watch: February 16, 2026

Mitsubishi Electric’s HVAC manufacturing plant in Chennai is its second major investment in India in the past two years. GE Aerospace plans to invest up to $300 million to upgrade its Singapore facilities, methods and equipment. Malaysia’s largest data center developer has $901 million plans for a new location in Cyberjaya.

MICHIGAN

Backed by helpful state legislation signed into law in December 2024, OpenAI’s Stargate project in partnership with Oracle and Related Digital has landed in Saline Township. Related Digital CEO Brent Behrman talks to Kelly Barraza about the factors behind the project and the location choice.

FILM & ENTERTAINMENT

What does the work of longtime Texan Taylor Sheridan, director of “Yellowstone” and “Landman,” have to do with the latest sector to discover AllianceTexas? Alexis Elmore found out from Hillwood President Mike Berry.

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Illustration by art squirrel: Getty Images

Last week the Pew Center on the States issued analysis of the rising cost and backlog of deferred maintenance and repair of state-owned buildings and infrastructure. The estimated annual shortfall for states’ road and bridge maintenance needs alone comes to at least $8.6 billion. Then add in another $100 billion for the repair backlog at schools, correctional facilities and other state-owned buildings.

Pew worked with The Volcker Alliance to analyze how all 50 states plan and budget for deferred infrastructure maintenance and then to develop a resource guide of promising approaches. Deferred maintenance may be among the most deferred topics of all when it comes to state policy, as we learned from Pew, The Volcker Alliance and others at a conference held at the Atlanta Fed in 2019, part of that year’s Global Groundwork Index analysis.

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Cincinnati is one of seven places GE Aerospace has implemented the Next Engineers college and career readiness program (in partnership with the University of Cincinnati). Grand Rapids, Michigan, will be the eighth, though an academic partner has not yet been chosen.
Photo by Rudy Balasko: Getty Images

Does your company consider workforce development philanthropy? In its second year as a stand-alone company, GE Aerospace has released an insightful and instructive 2025 Philanthropy Impact report that focuses on four core pillars: workforce development, STEM education, military and veterans’ causes, and disaster relief. “Together, our company, employees, and the GE Aerospace Foundation contributed more than $22.5 million in 2025 to organizations and communities around the world,” the company stated.

Workforce-related findings: 30,000 students reached through Next Engineers (2021-2025) and $30 million announced for a new multi-year workforce skills program to train 10,000 workers. In January, the GE Aerospace Foundation announced a significant expansion of its Next Engineers college and career readiness program, adding Grand Rapids, Michigan, as its newest program site and announcing plans to extend the existing program with the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio, through 2035 and add three additional locations to be announced in the coming years. The Next Engineers program currently serves students in Cincinnati; Greenville, South Carolina; Staffordshire, United Kingdom; Johannesburg, South Africa; Warsaw, Poland; Bengaluru, India; and the New York Capital Region.

Photo by Rebecca Roth courtesy of NASA/Goddard

In researching the archives of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, we recently ran across this photo made on Earth Day in April 2016 showing actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio in consultation with Dr. Piers Sellers, the Earth scientist, former astronaut and then deputy director of Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate who passed away from pancreatic cancer later that year at the age of 61. The two discussed the different missions NASA had underway to study changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, water and land masses.

A 2024 NASA tribute to Sellers noted he took part in three Space Shuttle missions, helped to construct the International Space Station and logged almost 35 days in space. “I’m much fonder of the Earth,” he once said, “having left it and looked back at it.”