Friends,

I want to make a focused case this time. The re-industrialization of America is the defining capital trend of the decade, and within it there is one state that keeps showing up at the center of the most consequential announcements. It is not on either coast. It is Indiana. In 2024 alone, the state secured a record $39.2 billion in committed capital investment — up 37% from the year before — across 169 company commitments and more than 17,000 new jobs at an average wage near $75,000. Since the start of 2022, Indiana has booked over $89 billion in committed capital. For a state often skipped over on the way from New York to California, those are not small numbers. They are the numbers of a place that has quietly become essential.

Pharma: the Lilly anchor

Start with what Indianapolis does better than almost anywhere on earth: make medicine. Eli Lilly has committed more than $50 billion to U.S. manufacturing since 2020, and over $21 billion of that is going into Indiana. Its LEAP district in Lebanon — a 600-acre complex northwest of the city — recently took an additional $4.5 billion and opened its first operating facility. This is the headquarters of a company at the center of the most important drug franchise in a generation, reinvesting at scale in its home state. That kind of anchor tenant pulls suppliers, talent, and capital in behind it for decades.

Data centers: Indiana became a top-tier market

The AI buildout needs land and power, and Indiana has both. Amazon has now committed roughly $26 billion to data-center infrastructure in the state — an $11 billion campus in New Carlisle (“Project Rainier,” which trains frontier AI models) plus $15 billion more announced for Northwest Indiana — making it the largest technology investor in Indiana history. Meta is adding $800 million in Jeffersonville. Statewide, announced data-center spending has climbed toward $14 billion and beyond. Each campus is a multi-decade demand signal for construction, services, and — critically — housing in markets where supply is still tight.

Batteries and advanced manufacturing

Kokomo is becoming a battery town. StarPlus Energy — the Stellantis and Samsung SDI joint venture — is investing over $6.3 billion in two lithium-ion gigafactories there, backed by a $7.5 billion federal loan and creating roughly 2,800 jobs. That is a foreign-and-domestic partnership choosing north-central Indiana to onshore the most strategically important component in the auto industry.

Chips and defense: the quiet advantage

Indiana is also building a credible semiconductor and microelectronics story. SkyWater Technology is developing a $1.8 billion fab in Purdue’s Discovery Park District, with MediaTek opening its first Midwest chip-design center alongside it. Tying it together is the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane and the Indiana-led “Silicon Crossroads” hub — one of the Defense Department’s Microelectronics Commons centers, with a five-year budget around $2 billion — positioning the state at the intersection of trusted microelectronics and national defense. In an era when chips and security are the same conversation, that is a rare and durable position.

And it doesn’t stop at the state line

Indiana’s momentum is amplified by everything happening around it. Intel is building a $28 billion chip campus outside Columbus, Ohio. The Stargate AI platform — over $400 billion nationally — anchored sites in Ohio and a $15 billion campus in Wisconsin, where Microsoft is separately spending $3.3 billion. Honda and LG are putting up to $4.4 billion into a battery plant in Ohio. Nationwide, announced manufacturing commitments since early 2025 now exceed $1.7 trillion. Indiana sits in the gravitational center of that map — close enough to every supply chain to matter, cheap enough on land and power to win the projects.

Why it matters

Pharma, data centers, batteries, chips, and defense are converging on one state at the same moment, on top of a public foundation of federal infrastructure and a defense budget north of $848 billion. These are decade-long, capital-intensive commitments that drop thousands of high-wage workers into communities where housing remains affordable and undersupplied. Capital follows jobs, jobs follow these projects, and people follow both. Indiana spent a long time being underestimated. The companies writing the biggest checks in America have stopped making that mistake — and so have we.

With conviction,

Ivan Barratt

Founder & CEO

The BAM Companies

Figures reflect publicly announced commitments and state economic-development reporting as of mid-2026 and are provided for general informational purposes only; they are not investment advice.