Kushner's Affinity Takes Stake in Multibillion-Dollar Power Project Extolled by Trump
Affinity backs plan to convert Pennsylvania's largest coal-fired plant into 3,200 acre data center campus fueled with natural gas
In late October, a Bombardier Challenger jet touched down at the Indiana County Jimmy Stewart Airport near Homer City, Pennsylvania, population 1,716. Out stepped Jared Kushner, a former White House senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump.
Kushner and his entourage got into a group of waiting cars and drove off, only to return earlier than scheduled and fly right back out, said Roger Ewing, the airport’s manager, who later posted a picture of himself with Kushner on his Facebook page. On the purpose of Kushner’s trip, Ewing said, “I didn’t ask.”
If Ewing had inquired, he might have learned that Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is investing in a multi-billion-dollar plan to convert a massive coal-fired generating station into a gas-fired hub for newly built data centers. It’s a project championed by the President himself.
The coal-fired Homer City plant had shut down permanently in July 2023 after years of struggling to keep up with competing electricity generators that run on much cheaper natural gas. A supporter of all things coal, Trump pledged to reopen Homer City while campaigning in Pennsylvania during the final days of the 2024 presidential race, part of his ultimately successful effort to capture what was perhaps the election’s most crucial swing state.
The Homer City redevelopment plan, announced in April of last year, allowed Trump to keep his promise, in a fashion. Trump lauded the project at a July 2025 energy conference in Pittsburgh, telling voters he had rescued the plant from the Green New Deal climate plan that Joe Biden put in place after capturing the White House in 2020. Little mention was made of the fact that, going forward, Pennsylvania’s largest coal-burning power plant would run on natural gas.
Saving Homer City
“In the campaign, I promised that I would save the Homer City power plant, 50 miles east of here, that Joe Biden’s green new scam forced to shut down,” Trump said during the conference. “Today we are pleased to report a $15 billion investment from Knighthead Capital Management.”
Photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash
A Knighthead spokesperson declined to comment. Affinity officials didn’t return calls or emails seeking comment.
Knighthead, a private investment firm, is the primary owner of the Homer City plant. The New York-based money manager, whose specialties include distressed debt, led a group of investors that acquired Homer City out of bankruptcy in 2017, only to permanently decommission the plant six years later, unable to stem its decline.
Now the firm is seeking to reverse its fortunes by taking advantage of copious natural gas supplies in the nearby Marcellus Shale field and booming electricity demand from data centers that run artificial intelligence applications. When it reopens as a gas-fired plant next year, the Homer City Generating Station will provide as much as 4.4 gigawatts of electricity — more than double its previous output — to fuel the data centers that will be co-located on its 3,200-acre campus.
Knighthead is raising the money for the project, which will initially require $10 billion for site development and power infrastructure, followed by billions more for data center development. The firm, which oversaw about $11.8 billion in net assets at the end of last year, began seeking funding in late October for a pair of private funds called KH Homer City Equity Holdings and KH Homer City Loan Holdings. The two partnerships held $24.6 million and $67.0 million respectively at the end of last year, filings show.
Deep Pockets
Affinity, based in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, was looking at investing in data centers, as well as AI and renewable energy, as far back as 2024, according to Bloomberg. What’s more, the firm has deep pockets and deep-pocketed investors; Affinity reported $6.2 billion in assets at the end of last year, most of which came from the sovereign wealth funds of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Having helped negotiate the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab countries during Trump’s first term, Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, founded Affinity shortly after his father-in-law lost to Biden in 2020. Now that Trump is back in office, Kushner has played an informal role in Middle Eastern diplomacy while continuing to manage billions for governments in the region, leading Democrats to protest that he faces a conflict of interest.
The firm’s investment in the Homer City redevelopment project came to light in a June regulatory filing by an affiliate called Affinity HC Cayman Blocker LLC. The Cayman vehicle disclosed that it held an equity stake in Homer City Holdings LLC, which is essentially the parent company to Homer City Generation, the operating company, according to real estate records.
Affinity HC pledged the Homer City stake to Bank of America under a financing agreement dated June 12, according to the filing. While the filing doesn’t disclose the size of this stake, it may well be a relatively large investment for Affinity, given that the firm is borrowing money against it.
The collateral that Affinity HC Cayman pledged to Bank of America also includes any debt it holds from a super senior term loan agreement that other lenders extended to Homer City Generation in September 2023, several months after the plant was officially shuttered. Within the power industry, super senior loans are sometimes used to fund the expenses incurred in decommissioning a generating station.
Intermediate Entity
Affinity says in its investment adviser registration that the firm’s funds can make use of leverage by incurring debt. Alternatively, they can have a portfolio company or an “intermediate entity” – such as Affinity HC Cayman– create the leverage by financing all or a portion of certain investments, “whether on a temporary or long-term basis.”
Bank of America, one of the two custodians that services Affinity’s funds, has also provided them with subscription credit lines, a form of financing backed by the capital commitments of fund investors. So-called sub lines have become universal among private equity managers, smoothing the processes of both making investments and collecting capital. Depending how it’s used, the financing can also add leverage to funds and thus has the potential to magnify losses as well as gains.
Affinity’s stake adds to the growing number of investments that the Trump family has made during his second term, often in industries favored by the administration. However, unlike the cryptocurrency ventures now being run by Trump’s sons—which contributed mightily to the $2 billion of income that he reported last year—there’s no sign that the president has invested in Homer City.
Now that Homer City is converting to natural gas, the plant’s profitability won’t benefit as much as coal-fired plants do from Trump’s effort to slash environmental regulations on fossil fuels. The biggest consideration: in most parts of the country, it remains far cheaper and more efficient to generate electricity with natural gas rather than coal.
The generating station “has been a distressed case for years,” said Peter Maloney, a former utility reporter who covered its ups and downs. But the redevelopment project, Maloney added, “could be the resurrection of Homer City.”