Artificial intelligence systems have yet to spark upheavals in Virginia’s job market, but significant changes are likely within the next two to five years, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce said recently.
In answer, a group of Southwest Virginia government, business and educational leaders has formed a planning committee to determine what role they might play in managing those changes.
The AI Ready Roanoke coalition called out this month for consultants’ proposals to study market demand and feasibility for what it calls a “regional AI Center of Excellence.”
Its request for proposals states that the “Roanoke region is at an inflection point.”
The coming Google data center complex in Botetourt County, along with the region’s advanced manufacturing, life sciences research and higher education capacity, “creates a rare opportunity to build durable regional prosperity around AI,” according to the request.
The committee notes that the 2025 Virginia Chamber AI Landscape Assessment found that about 32% of jobs in GO Virginia Region 2 could face AI-related changes, while just 4% of the state’s AI training comes from local or regional providers. The chamber’s assessment concluded that establishing an AI center of excellence — focused in part on training to use the technology and on new job training for those who lose jobs to AI — should be a regional priority.
State economic initiative GO Virginia’s Region 2 covers the Roanoke Valley, the New River Valley and the Virginia Highlands.
“It doesn’t mean that 100% are going to get laid off, but the disruptions are pretty massive,” said Botetourt County Economic Development Director Kyle Rosner, who wrote the committee’s request document. “And some of that’s going to be negative, and some of it’s going to be positive.
“Some employers are going to see growth from embracing AI, and employment opportunities, and some are going to see reductions, just because the roles will get minimized with AI. It’s a massive disruption on the scale of, like, automation or the internet or any of these big kinds of Industrial Revolution-era disruptions.
“So this is an attempt for our region to kind of coordinate efforts.”
The committee has representatives from Botetourt County, Salem, Roanoke, Roanoke County, Carilion Clinic, Google, Virginia Tech, Radford University, Roanoke College, Virginia Western Community College, the Roanoke-Blacksburg Innovation Alliance and the Roanoke Regional Partnership.
The group has applied to GO Virginia for a $99,999 grant, which would go toward a consultant cost of $257,409. The bulk of the remainder would be covered by local partners: Botetourt County, Salem, Roanoke County, Roanoke, Roanoke College, Radford University, Virginia Western, Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic. Google also would contribute $26,205.
Rosner said word on the grant request is expected by the end of September. If the committee does not get the grant, it is likely to change the request or cancel it altogether, the request for proposals states.
[Disclosure: Google is one of our donors through its Google News Initiative, which helped support our expansion in the New River Valley. Carilion also is one of our donors. Donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Rosner said in a series of phone calls that the committee is not wedded to any particular ideas. After the group chooses a consultant next month, it hopes to see a report by the second quarter of 2027, he said.
Discussions began among group members in early 2025 and gained momentum this year, with plenty of ideas surfacing in between.
AI Ready Roanoke lists three primary areas of focus:
- AI adoption in industry, including computing access for regional employers. Emphasis would be on small and mid-sized businesses that don’t yet have the “knowledge, tools, and trusted resources” to productively use AI.
- Talent and workforce development, featuring AI literacy and job credentials, and new training for workers, including displaced ones and employers. Education would happen through the region’s colleges and universities, and the Greater Roanoke Workforce Development Board.
- Support for AI-enabled startups and applied projects. The plan could be to extend the Roanoke-Blacksburg Innovation Alliance’s existing accelerator programs, such as RAMP, “rather than creating a parallel pipeline,” the request states.
The committee has discussed three potential sites:
- A proposed new building adjacent to both the future data center campus at Botetourt Center at Greenfield and to manufacturers on the Greenfield site, such as Altec, Eldor, Munters and New Belgium Brewing.
- The Roanoke College-owned historic Salem Post Office, possibly adapted as a workforce development center with AI education, literacy and new skill training.
- RoVa Labs at Carilion Clinic, recently opened as a biotechnology incubator in downtown Roanoke. It is already set up to use AI in drug discovery, medical devices and other innovations.
“We want to be very clear that we’re not tied to this,” Rosner said of the sites. The programming itself is more important, based on what the consultant learns about the needs, he added.
The study would focus on several industries that were identified in GO Virginia’s regional growth and diversification plan: information technology, engineering services and emerging technology; manufacturing for transportation, energy and autonomy; advanced materials manufacturing; and life sciences and biotech.
Market demand findings would lead to recommendations for the necessary programming, training, expertise and computing access needs, the request states.
“We are looking for specific information to our region,” Rosner said. “We’re more focused on the recommended pathways for upskilling them if they are going to be displaced, and also what … skill sets we do not have enough of in our region that we need to start prioritizing. We need to get our higher ed partners and our workforce partners focused in this new age.”
The Southwest Virginia Data Center Transparency Alliance, which coalesced after the announcement that Google would build its campus in Botetourt County, is skeptical of the committee’s motives, said Julie Bivins, one of the alliance’s leaders.
“It’s a bit frustrating that more of our tax dollars are going to this extractive industry, especially knowing that so many Americans are concerned about AI or against the way that it’s being used in a lot of instances,” Bivins said in a phone call. “It feels like there is this inevitability of AI that is being pushed on us from everywhere, and it feels like our regional authorities are buying into this as well.”
Bivins and her group began their activism over concerns about the Botetourt County site’s potential water usage, but have since become involved with multiple aspects of data centers in the region. She said that Google’s participation in the committee signals “a clear attempt to … ingrain themselves in our community here, that feels really self-serving.”
Rosner said that Google is not the coordinator. Instead, the committee asked Google if it wanted to participate and contribute funding. By the time a consultant delivers a demand and feasibility report, multiple other regional manufacturers, along with life sciences and technology concerns, will likely be involved, he said.
AI and the changes it is projected to bring will happen regardless of data centers’ presence in Southwest Virginia, he said.
“I think this is the starting point of something that will hopefully grow and be a lot more comprehensive,” Rosner said.
He added: “Even if Google wasn’t coming here and there was no data center investment in Botetourt or even the region, this is still a worthwhile endeavor for us to conduct, and this is still something that we should be doing.”
The committee’s request for proposals came ahead of larger AI news, as international tech and political leaders recently began arguing more publicly about whether they need to pull back on development. Company leaders such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are calling to slow development, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Trump administration technology adviser David Sacks are calling for faster development, according to The New York Times.
They were responding to events including AI-sparked cyberattacks and other security incidents that the humans behind the tech say they had not ordered. An Anthropic researcher resigned his position and issued a warning that unchecked models could cause human extinction.
That warning wasn’t the first issued over the past several years. Combined with the recent cybersecurity incidents, however, it has raised more public concern.
These larger philosophical questions are not part of the AI Ready Roanoke group’s purview, Rosner said. Instead, it is responding to not only the chamber of commerce study but to the concerns of regional businesses that want to adopt AI into applications such as logistics platforms and supply chains, he said.
The idea is guidance for “a lot of businesses, particularly small and mid-size manufacturers who are frankly too busy to spend time doing that and leaning into it, that’s what we’re trying to provide folks,” he said. “We’re only in the planning stage right now, but we’re just trying to get some structure together so the region’s ready for it and has a plan and has done some thinking around it.”
