Databricks cofounder's Laude Institute awards $40M to four university AI moonshot labs
BenBlaiszik · x · 2026-11-06
Laude Institute, founded by Databricks cofounder Andy Konwinski and Turing Award winner Dave Patterson, announced the first Moonshots // ONE winners: four labs, $40 million total, each direction unanimously selected.
Winning labs (each gets $10M for a multi-year lab):
- Workforce Reskilling: Stanford University
- Strengthening Civic Discourse: Cornell University
- Advancing Healthcare: UCSF and UC Berkeley
- Accelerating Science: University of Chicago
The program grew out of the 2024 effort "Shaping AI's Impact on Billions of Lives," asking where computer scientists can do the most good. Konwinski argues frontier open science incentives are broken—compute costs alone price out most teams—and the program aims to get resources to the right researchers at the right time. Eight teams defended their work after six months before the Academy Awards-style ceremony.
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