Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori Huang, attend the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif. on April 18, 2026. Lisa O'CONNOR / AFP via Getty Images

Universities are racing to secure the resources needed for serious A.I. research, but competing with deep-pocketed private labs requires more than academic talent. Increasingly, wealthy donors and tech leaders are stepping in to help. Their gifts are funding new colleges and research centers, opening access to A.I. infrastructure and supporting new academic programs. Philanthropists are even helping build the country’s first A.I.-native hospital, as universities play a larger role in shaping how the technology is developed and applied.

Here is a look at nine major gifts driving academia’s next era.

Michael and Susan Dell: University of Texas at Austin, $750 million

Michael Dell arrived at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1980s, planning to study medicine. Instead, he began selling personal computers from his dorm room and dropped out to build Dell Technologies. Four decades later, he and his wife, Susan, are helping UT Austin build a medical center designed explicitly for the A.I. age.

Their $750 million commitment, unveiled in April, will establish the UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research and its centerpiece, the UT Dell Medical Center, which the university calls the country’s first “A.I.-native” hospital.

With a new facility, “you can design it from the start with data and computing and A.I. built in,” Dell told CNBC. The commitment also supports scholarships, student housing and the university’s supercomputing center, while pushing the couple’s lifetime contributions to UT Austin past $1 billion. Construction could begin as early as September, with the medical center scheduled to open in 2030.

Mark and Mary Stevens: University of Southern California, $200 million

Venture capitalist Mark Stevens earned three degrees from the University of Southern California before joining Sequoia Capital, where he was part of the team behind early investments in Google and Nvidia. Today, he sits on Nvidia’s board and is betting heavily on A.I.’s future.

In May, Stevens and his wife, Mary, gifted $200 million to USC to embed A.I. research across disciplines from medicine to business to the arts.

“With A.I., we’re only in the first inning,” Stevens told The Los Angeles Times, predicting the world a decade from now “will be unrecognizable to us.” The funding will help recruit A.I. researchers working on areas such as new therapeutics, cybersecurity and human creativity. It builds on the couple’s earlier USC gifts of $22 million in 2004 and $50 million in 2015.

USC is also launching a Bachelor of Science in A.I. this fall, adding to more than 30 A.I.- and computing-related programs.

Jensen and Lori Huang: Universities and nonprofit research institutes, $108 million in A.I. compute

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori, met as engineering students at Oregon State University. Their charitable foundation is now helping researchers access the expensive computing infrastructure powering the A.I. boom.

In May, Nvidia disclosed that the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation had agreed to purchase GPU computing time from CoreWeave for universities and nonprofit research institutes. According to the filing, $108.3 million in computing resources had been donated so far for open science and A.I. research.

Rather than cash, the gift provides raw compute. CoreWeave operates cloud infrastructure built on Nvidia technology, while the chipmaker invested $2 billion in the company in January.

The Huangs have backed university computing before: in 2022, they gave Oregon State $50 million toward a research complex housing an Nvidia‑powered supercomputer.

University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Catalyst Collective: $100 million

Tech leaders and major donors joined forces to finance UW–Madison’s first new college in more than 40 years.

The Catalyst Collective, including Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, former Cisco CEO John Morgridge, Intuit co-founder Scott Cook, Doximity co-founder Jeff Tangney and software giant Epic Systems, committed $100 million to launch the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, which opened July 1.

The funding will help recruit faculty, expand research and build advanced computing infrastructure. UW–Madison plans to add 50 faculty positions through the college, bringing its broader wave of new A.I.-related hires to more than 100. The college combines computer sciences, statistics and the Information School, with priorities including trust, fairness, privacy, environmental sustainability and the future of work.

“A.I. is already reshaping society,” Dean Remzi Arpaci‑Dusseau said. “In moments of major change, universities have a responsibility to engage, not stand on the sidelines.”

Sanford and Joan Weill: Stanford Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco, $100 million

Former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill and his wife, Joan, are bringing together two of California’s top cancer research centers.

In July 2025, the Weill Family Foundation announced a $100 million matching gift to establish the Weill Cancer Hub West, a collaboration between Stanford Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco. Both institutions pledged to raise an additional $50 million each, bringing total funding to $200 million over a decade. “Good things happen when people collaborate,” Weill said in Stanford’s announcement.

Early projects include building an A.I. model that integrates clinical and biological data to inform personalized cancer treatments. Another project will use A.I. to analyze millions of immune cells and improve therapies for treatment-resistant tumors. Another team is developing a CRISPR-based method to engineer cancer-fighting immune cells inside the body.

Reed Hastings: Bowdoin College, $50 million

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings traces his interest in A.I. back to a conversation with a Bowdoin professor in 1982. In 2025, he returned to his alma mater with a $50 million gift, the largest in Bowdoin’s history, to establish the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity.

Rather than focusing narrowly on technical development, the initiative examines how A.I. could reshape ethics, work, creativity, relationships and inequality. “Our moral‑ethical system improvements need some bolstering,” Hastings told The New York Times.

Bowdoin is using the gift to fund 10 faculty positions across areas, including computer science, philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience and government, and has launched programming on issues ranging from algorithmic bias to A.I.’s environmental costs.

Joe and Rika Mansueto: University of Chicago, $50 million

Morningstar founder Joe Mansueto and his wife, Rika Yoshida, both University of Chicago alumni, gave the university $50 million in April to launch the Mansueto Faculty of Mind and Machine Challenge.

The challenge aims to attract additional donors and generate nearly $200 million in total to recruit and support 20 scholars across fields ranging from medicine and law to science and the humanities. Funding will also support the broader research and educational ecosystem around A.I. The effort builds on an existing UChicago initiative backing faculty projects in areas including oncology, archaeology, public policy and the visual arts.

“With A.I. advancing at an unprecedented pace, the most important breakthroughs won’t come from technology alone,” Mansueto said.

Arnie and Lauren Bellini: University of South Florida, $40 million

ConnectWise co-founder Arnie Bellini and his wife, Lauren, are positioning Tampa as a technology hub dubbed “Cyber Bay.”

In March 2025, the couple gave the University of South Florida $40 million, the largest gift in its history, to establish the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing, which USF calls the nation’s first named college focused on the intersection of A.I. and cybersecurity.

“Cyberattacks are the new missiles, and A.I. is the arms race of our time,” Bellini said at the time. When the college officially launched in August 2025, 14 newly hired professors joined its faculty, bringing expertise in areas including machine learning, trustworthy A.I. and biomedical applications.

Tom Secunda-led donor group: Binghamton University, $30 million plus $25 million from New York State

Bloomberg LP co-founder Tom Secunda is helping Binghamton University build what it calls the first independent A.I. research center at a U.S. public university.

In January, Secunda and a group of donors committed $30 million to establish the Center for AI Responsibility and Research. The private funding will support the center’s launch, while a $25 million capital investment from SUNY will support a permanent facility and equipment.

“This new center will help create the tools, standards, and talent pipeline the country needs so A.I. is not only powerful, but also secure, transparent, and worthy of public confidence,” Secunda said in a statement.

Binghamton is also an early member of New York’s Empire A.I. consortium, giving universities access to elite computing resources. Faculty and students already lead 10 projects approved to use Empire Alpha, the consortium’s first supercomputer.