The pot of money will fund AI researchers as US universities face cuts to funding for science and research.
The House Fund, a pre-seed and early-stage venture capital fund investing in University of California, Berkeley spinouts, has launched what it calls the first university-based AI funding programme.
The House Fund, which Pitchbook reports has raised $12m for the programme, will finance UC Berkeley’s researchers working on AI with commercial and governemnt applications.
“This initiative is an urgent response to federal nationwide cuts in university research funding at a time when more American investment in AI and infrastructure is crucial,” said the fund in a blog post.
The US administration under Donald Trump has ushered in a series of cuts to science and research funding that universities rely on. It has also cut funding to federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, which provides funding to universities for biomedical research.
Some of the largest US universities have been caught in the crosshairs of the funding cuts, including Columbia University and Harvard University, which is suing the US administration after it froze $2.2bn of government funding.
The new AI funding programme, called BAIR Grant, will fund researchers that are part of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab. It will provide up to $250,000 investment and up to $600,000 in free compute on US infrastructure for each startup.
The House Fund has backed more than 50 startups co-founded by UC Berkeley AI researchers.
