Tech billionaires fund campus AI expansion

Universities are turning to wealthy technology donors to recruit researchers, build computing infrastructure and keep pace with private AI labs. Michael and Susan Dell’s $750 million commitment to the University of Texas at Austin will help create a medical center designed for the AI age, while Mark and Mary Stevens gave the University of Southern California $200 million to embed AI research across medicine, business, the arts and other fields.

Jensen and Lori Huang are backing open science with $108.3 million in donated computing resources through CoreWeave, giving universities and nonprofit research institutes access to GPU capacity. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Catalyst Collective committed $100 million to launch a new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence focused on areas including trust, fairness, privacy, sustainability and work.

Other gifts target specific applications and broader social questions. Sanford and Joan Weill pledged $100 million to a Stanford Medicine and University of California, San Francisco cancer collaboration, Reed Hastings gave Bowdoin College $50 million for the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity, and Joe and Rika Mansueto gave the University of Chicago $50 million toward a challenge seeking nearly $200 million. Arnie and Lauren Bellini gave the University of South Florida $40 million for AI and cybersecurity, while Tom Secunda’s donor group committed $30 million to Binghamton University alongside $25 million from New York State.