A five-year, $10.5 million gift from philanthropist Tom Secunda, co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., will help fund artificial intelligence-related research at Cornell Tech in New York City and at the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science in Ithaca.
Secunda's gift will support Cornell researchers affiliated with the Empire AI Consortium, a technology partnership launched in 2024 by Gov. Kathy Hochul with support from New York state and research institutions. The initiative, which aims to promote AI innovations focused on the public good in New York, has established a centralized AI computing infrastructure housed at the University at Buffalo, in collaboration with other universities in the state.
"I'm proud to be supporting Cornell's top AI researchers in their pursuit of new, groundbreaking AI developments that will benefit the people of New York. By giving these researchers the freedom to explore all the opportunities that this nascent technology has to offer, we are opening up a new world of technological development," said Secunda, who is also a member of the steering committee for the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech.
"I'm also honored to be contributing to the advancement of Empire AI," Secunda said, "which is shaping up to be one of the most impactful public-private technology partnerships in recent memory."
Secunda's gift will create the Cornell Empire AI Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Fund, in partnership with the Jacobs Institute, and will also fund an annual public conference at Cornell Tech that showcases work by Cornell fellows and faculty utilizing Empire AI.
"Mr. Secunda's generous support represents a remarkable opportunity for Cornell University, which is already a national leader in AI research, to bring more top AI scholars from around the world to both its Cornell Tech campus in New York City and to Cornell Bowers CIS on our Ithaca campus," Provost Kavita Bala said. "The transformational potential of their work will be facilitated by the computing resources now available through the Empire AI Consortium and will also showcase New York state's leadership in AI."
In addition to funding the new fellowship and conference, the gift will facilitate Cornell researchers' access to high-performance Empire AI computing resources. These researchers will help attract new researchers to the Cornell Tech campus, according to Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech.
"The Cornell Tech community is grateful to Tom Secunda for his wisdom and generosity in creating this opportunity for our campus and for the AI research community," Morrisett said. "Tom's support allows us to significantly expand our research in AI by attracting an elite cohort of the best researchers in the world. Their work, which will now progress much more quickly thanks to Empire AI, will allow our campus to further increase its significant economic impact on New York City and its growing tech sector."
Grace Stanley is a staff writer/editor for Cornell Tech.
