Been waiting snow long for wintry fun!
CUNY gets $75M for AI plan, biggest gift in system’s history
The City University of New York is expected to announce Wednesday it received a $75 million donation tied to a statewide artificial intelligence project — the largest gift in the public university system’s history.
A third of the donation from the Simons Foundation will fund CUNY’s participation in Empire AI, a public-private partnership proposed by Gov. Hochul this month to give seven New York universities and research institutions access to an artificial intelligence computing center upstate.
“This new initiative and computational facility will allow us to collectively advance and utilize AI technology,” CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez said in a statement, “and create a national model for this work.”
The remainder of Wednesday’s gift will create 25 faculty positions and a master’s degree program in computational science at the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown Manhattan.
The state program unveiled this month was billed as a way to promote collaborative, “responsible” research and development of AI and create jobs and opportunities that benefit the public good. While big tech companies currently have more access to the costly computing resources that power AI systems, the initiative seeks to level the playing field for researchers and public interest organizations, the governor’s office said.
Hochul said she would direct up to $275 million from the state in grant and other funding, on top of private backing earmarked for the consortium.
Alongside CUNY and the Simons Foundation, the other founding institutions are Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the State University of New York.
The state is eyeing SUNY Buffalo as a potential site for the upstate computing center.
Wednesday’s record-breaking donation was first reported by The New York Times.
“The Simons Foundation is excited to be a partner in building this new AI facility that will enable researchers at CUNY, the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute and other New York State partners to have access to cutting-edge facilities,” Simons Foundation President David Spergel said earlier this month.
Over the summer, the foundation also gifted $500 million to Stony Brook University, which is part of SUNY, with the organization saying at the time it was the largest-ever unrestricted donation to any university in the country. It was made as part of another state program introduced by Hochul that created a matching fund for SUNY endowment contributions.