Billionaire donates $200 million to US university to help in AI race
As technology giants vie for leadership in the artificial intelligence race, the United States’ top universities are also looking for the best resources to study and research the technology. And the University of Southern California (USC) just received a huge bet from one of the country’s most prominent venture capital investors to put it firmly in the mix.
USC announced that venture capital billionaire, Nvidia board member and Giving Pledge signatory Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary Stevens, are donating a staggering $200 million to launch a university-wide AI initiative.
Also read: Dell billionaire started it all in a university dorm and now donated US$750 million
The donation is among the largest in the institution’s 146-year history. In recognition, the School of Advanced Computing, linked to the Viterbi School of Engineering (one of the main engineering schools in the country), will be renamed USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
“As a top destination for AI talent, USC can accelerate our mission to shape future leaders, tackle real-world problems, and advance people’s human values and autonomy,” USC President Beong-Soo Kim said in a statement.
The $200 million grant will fund the hiring of AI researchers and support work in health sciences, security, business and the arts.
“We know that the great universities of the future will be those that invest in computing,” Stevens, who is also a USC alumnus, said in a statement. “This is a defining moment.”
Who is Mark Stevens?
Stevens, 66, earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and economics from USC in 1981 and a master’s degree in computer engineering from the university in 1984. He then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1989.
He joined Sequoia Capital the same year and became a partner in 1993, when he led Sequoia’s investment in then-unknown chipmaker Nvidia. Led by Jensen Huang, Nvidia is today considered the most valuable company in the world and has a market value of US$5 trillion. Stevens remains on Nvidia’s board and runs his own family wealth management firm, S-Cubed Capital, in Menlo Park.
During his career at Sequoia, Stevens was part of the team responsible for initial bets on Google, Yahoo, YouTube and Nvidia. He left Sequoia to create S-Cubed Capital in 2012.
The financial return was enormous: according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Stevens has a net worth of US$12.5 billion and also holds a stake in the NBA team Golden State Warriors.
Signatory of the Giving Pledge reinforces support for the university where he studied
In 2013, Mark Stevens and Mary Stevens signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment created by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates to encourage billionaires to donate the majority of their fortunes.
“Mary and I realized we had far more wealth than we would ever need and began thinking about what to do with it,” wrote Mark Stevens in his letter to the Giving Pledge.
“There were four options: 1) give it to your kids (we have three), 2) let the government take it from you and redistribute it, 3) spend it without any limit, or 4) donate pretty much everything to causes and organizations we believe can make a difference in the world.”
“We are excited to dedicate a significant portion of our future time and energy to the fourth option,” he continued.
USC has been a constant beneficiary. Stevens has served on the university’s board of directors since 2001, and the couple’s previous gifts include $50 million in 2015 to create the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which uses imaging technologies to study Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and traumatic brain injuries, as well as other gifts that gave its name to the USC Stevens Center for Innovation and the Stevens Academic Center for student-athletes.
The new $200 million gift pledge will expand work in neuroimaging and direct resources to the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a research center affiliated with the United States Army that uses AI in military training simulations, in addition to USC’s new bachelor’s degree in artificial intelligence and its AI for Business program.
Universities rush to keep up
Stevens told the Los Angeles Times that universities risk being left behind if they don’t advance quickly in AI, especially as much of the most advanced research has moved to private companies.
“I think many American universities risk being left behind if they don’t invest and raise resources to drive the AI revolution,” Stevens said. He also acknowledged the risks of the technology, adding that “AI in the wrong hands… can be very destructive.”
“I think one of the roles of American universities is to understand, to have a balanced approach and to understand the limits and protection mechanisms that need to be followed as AI becomes widespread,” he continued.
Several other billionaires have also donated to American universities to help them keep up with the AI race.
Last month, Michael Dell and Susan Dell donated $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin to fund a medical center built from the ground up around AI, bringing the Dell family’s total donations to the university to more than $1 billion.
In January, technology billionaire and Workday co-founder David Duffield donated a record US$371.5 million (R$1.8 billion) to Cornell University’s engineering school, with part of the proceeds earmarked for research in AI and quantum engineering, according to the Ithaca Voice.
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman allocated US$350 million (R$1.7 billion) to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 to create the Schwarzman College of Computing, an interdisciplinary center focused on AI.
