Miles SmithA New York state project to further artificial intelligence technology research has received $165 million in new funding and is expected to gain three new university participants.
The Empire AI consortium received $90 million in new funding in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fiscal year 2026 budget. An additional $25 million will come from the State University of New York System and $50 million in matching funds from the University of Rochester, the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which are all expected to join the program pending legislative approval.
The project will support work on domains such as climate change, drug discovery, education, food insecurity, cybersecurity threats and health care diagnostics.
The new funding will allow the state to increase the power of the Empire AI supercomputer at the University at Buffalo and increase researcher access. The program has already raised more than $400 million in funding contributed by the state and other consortium members.
“The United States is in a race with China and the rest of the world in the global AI revolution, and with our first-in-the-nation Empire AI Consortium, New York is leading the way in research and innovation,” Gov. Hochul said. “With Empire AI, we are setting the standard for harnessing the power of AI for the public good and ultimately creating a better future for New Yorkers.”
Research includes the development of new AI models that can analyze CT scans to help physicians diagnose lung cancer and technologies that could provide adaptive speech and language therapies to children, according to the governor’s office.
The project’s participants also include SUNY, City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Flatiron Institute.
Photo Courtesy
Argonne National Laboratory’s Flickr page via Wikimedia Commons
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
