Databricks, co-founder of Prperxity, pledges $100 million to a new fund for AI researchers
Andy Konwinski, computer scientist and co-founder of Databricks and Perelexity, announced on Monday that he was his personal company. praiseforming a new AI Institute supported by his own $100 million pledge of money.
Noraud Institute It appears to be a fund that is trying to form an investment just like grants, not an AI lab. In addition to Konwinski, the institute’s board includes Professor Dave Patterson, Professor UC Berkeley (known for his award-winning series of research), Jeff Dean (known as Google’s Chief Scientist), and Joelle Pineau (vice president of AI Research, Meta).
Konwinski announces the institute’s first “flagship” grant, which costs $3 million a year, for five years, and pins UC Berkeley’s new AI Systems Lab. This is a new lab led by one of Berkeley’s famous Aeon Stoicka, the current director of Sky Computing Labs. Stoica is also co-founder of Startup Anyscale (the AI and Python platform) and AI big data company Databricks, both Tech, developed in Berkeley’s lab system.
The new AI Systems Lab is set to open in 2027, and in addition to Stoica, many other well-known researchers will be included.
In him Blog post Konwinski, who published the Institute, described its mission as “structured by computer science researchers and exists to catalyze tasks that not only drive the field forward, but also guide it towards more beneficial results.”
It is not necessarily a direct excavation at Openai, which began as an AI research facility. However, other researchers have also fallen prey to the temptation of money.
For example, popular AI researcher Epoch The controversy faced When it was revealed that Openai supported the creation of one of its AI benchmarks and was used to announce the new O3 model. Epoch’s founders also launched a startup on a controversial mission Replace all human workers with AI agents everywhere.
Like other AI research institutes with commercial ambitions, Konwinski formed his institute across boundaries. As a nonprofit organization with the management division of public benefits companies.
He divides his research investment into two buckets, which he calls “slingshot and moonshot.” Slingshots are for early stage research where you can benefit from grants and practical help. Moonshot, as the name suggests, is because of “a long-distance lab that tackles species-level challenges like AI for scientific discovery, civic discourse, healthcare and reskilling of the workforce.”
For example, his lab worked with “Terminal Bench,” a Stanford-led benchmark on how well AI agents handle tasks. It is used by humanity.
One thing to note is that Konwinski’s company Laude is not just a grant writing laboratory. He also co-founded a for-profit venture fund launched in 2024. The fund is co-foundered by former Nea VC Pete Sonsini. As TechCrunch previously reported, Laude led a $12 million investment in AI Agent Infrastructure Startup Arcade. Other startups also quietly supported us.
A large spokesman says while Konwinski pledges $100 million, he is also looking for investments from other successful technicians, and is open. On how Konwinski has accumulated enough fortune to guarantee $100 million for this new effort: Databricks shut down $15.3 billion During the January funding round, the company was valued at $62 billion. Last month’s confusion was secured It also has a valuation of $14 billion.
Does the world need yet another AI “good for humanity” research? No, yes.
AI research has arrived It’s getting more and more confused. For example, there has been a wealth of AI benchmarks recently designed to prove that a particular vendor’s model works best. (Salesforce too There is a unique LLM benchmark for CRMS. )
Supporting truly independent research, which can eventually turn into independent human-focused commercial transactions, could become an attractive alternative.