Lowe’s is investing $250 million to train plumbers, carpenters, and electricians as its CEO says skilled trades are ‘critical to the future’

For decades, young people were told to go to college, with white-collar jobs like coding cast as the future. But as AI disrupts that career path, skilled trades are emerging as a more resilient route to stable, well-paying work—and Lowe’s is betting heavily in that future.

The home improvement giant exclusively told Fortune that its foundation is investing $250 million over the next decade to help train 250,000 skilled trades workers in fields like plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work. The company had previously committed over $50 million to nonprofits and community college partners, but according to Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison, the shifting dynamics of the workforce have made skilled-trade funding essential to the country’s future.

“We’re a company that believes strongly in the future of AI, but in a world where administrative and analytical occupations are going to be increasingly dominated with the acceleration of AI, we think the skilled trades initiative is going to be even more important here in the near future,” Ellison told Fortune. 

AI, he noted, has clear limits. It can write code, draft emails, and analyze spreadsheets—but it can’t show up to fix what’s broken or build the physical infrastructure, such as data centers, that powers the future digital economy.

“As powerful as AI will become, AI can’t climb a ladder to change the batteries in your smoke detector,” Ellison added. “It can’t change your furnace filter; it can’t clean your dryer vent; it can’t repair a hole on your........

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