Education

Nvidia Backs $100,000,000 Push To Spread AI Across College Campuses

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Nvidia is joining a federal program to expand artificial intelligence on college campuses across the nation.

The tech giant is teaming up with the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs program, according to a Tuesday Nvidia blog post. The initiative intends to fund “up to 10 AI Infrastructure Hubs,” by giving one award per state or region in the US, the Tuesday NSF announcement said.

“Artificial intelligence is transforming how we conduct research, accelerate scientific discovery and address complex challenges across disciplines,” said NSF Chief of Staff Brian Stone, who is performing the duties of the NSF director, according to the announcement. “The State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs program supports a national mission to advance AI for science.”

When asked for comment, Nvidia referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the company’s announcement post.

The NSF’s program builds upon the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource pilot program, which Nvidia supported, according to the company’s Tuesday blog post. Nvidia will provide technical guidance and training services to the NSF’s program.

The California-based tech company said its goal is to “help institutions build repeatable, openly available programs that prepare learners to use AI systems, accelerated computing and data workflows responsibly and effectively,” the company said in its post on the NSF initiative.

“The AI Infrastructure Hubs will significantly expand computing, data and AI resources available to the research community beyond what is nationally available through the NSF-led National AI Research Resource (NAIRR),” an NSF spokesperson told the DCNF. “AI Infrastructure Hubs are encouraged to integrate with national resources such as the NAIRR, providing the ability to surge and share resources beyond local capacity and enable dataset sharing.”

The NAIRR aims to broaden the pool of American workers equipped to build and use AI in scientific research, and the hubs program intends to give students early, hands-on access to AI resources as well as support faculty instruction, the NSF spokesperson added.

“American scientists deserve the world’s best tools to enable their most ambitious work,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said, according to NSF’s announcement. “In Science: A New Golden Age, we called for expanding access to world-class R&D infrastructure, including advanced compute, to reflect how science is conducted today. These hubs deliver on that commitment in the most practical way possible”

The July White House report calls for expanding advanced computing and AI infrastructure so America can “fully harness AI and its associated productivity uplift.”

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy each did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

The US NSF announced the program in an Aug. 4 X post. The program will “advance AI-enabled discovery and innovation in research & workforce development by expanding access to compute, data & AI resources,” the post said.

Some Americans disagree with the initiatives to increase the use of institutional AI.

In California, roughly 4,000 people signed a petition advocating against renewing the California State University system’s contract with OpenAI, the New York Times (NYT) reported in June. The petition included 1,000 faculty signatures.

“We feel like a guinea pig for what A.I. is going to do to higher education,” SFSU professor Martha Kenney told the NYT at the time.

Kenney said that pushing generative AI is “a step down the path of creating a really different kind of future citizen and worker.”

Google committed $1 billion for “AI literacy, research and more over the next 3 years” in Aug. 2025, the company announced in an X post.

Nvidia co-founder Chris Malachowsky personally donated $25 million to the University of Florida for training services, hardware and software in 2020, according to University of Florida news. Nvidia separately donated an additional $25 million.