University Of Wisconsin Receives $100 Million For Its New AI College
University Of Wisconsin Receives $100 Million For Its New AI College
Publish Date: 2026-04-28 06:00:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
The University of Wisconsin – Madison announces the inaugural dean for its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as well as $100 million in private support for the initiative.
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The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received $100 million in private gift commitments for its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, which is set to launch on July 1, 2026.
The donations come from what’s referred to as the Catalyst Collective — a group of alumni, business leaders and corporate partners who have pledged major investments in the college. The alumni donors include Andy Konwinski, cofounder of Laude, Databricks and Perplexity AI; John Morgridge, former chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, and Tashia Morgridge, a retired special education teacher; Signe Ostby, a former marketing executive; and Jeff Tangney, cofounder and CEO of Doximity. The contributors also include Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit; and Epic, a software company based in Verona, Wisconsin.
Approved last December by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, the college is the first academic division created at UW–Madison in over 40 years. The new unit will include existing UW degree programs in computer sciences, data science, statistics, library science, and information science.
The university plans to hire 50 new faculty members for the AI college in the upcoming years who will create new courses, certificates, majors, and degree programs involving AI technology and related issues involving the ethics and risks of artificial intelligence. Many of those new faculty will hold joint appointments in departments across the institution. In addition to the private philanthropy, the university intends to provide more than $50 million in annual investment to support the college.
On Monday, the university also announced that Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, the Grace Wahba professor of Computer Sciences and former chair of the Computer Sciences Department at UW, will serve as the…
