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On May 5, 2026, the University of Southern California announced a transformative $200 million gift from venture capitalist and longtime trustee Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary, to dramatically expand artificial intelligence research and education across the university. The donation is one of the largest in USC’s history and a marquee investment in AI within American higher education, signaling how central advanced computing has become to the future of universities, industry and public life.
The gift anchors a sweeping, universitywide AI initiative meant to connect disciplines as diverse as health sciences, national security, business, the arts and media. USC leaders say the funding will help the university recruit world-class AI scholars, accelerate research that tackles real-world problems, and ensure that human values, ethics and agency remain at the center of AI innovation.
In recognition of the donation, USC is renaming its School of Advanced Computing as the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence. The newly named school will serve as USC’s central academic home for computing and AI, bringing together faculty and students who work across machine learning, data science, human-computer interaction, graphics, robotics and related fields.
The Stevens School is headquartered in the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Hall, a purpose-built facility designed around the idea that computing should advance human needs and interdisciplinary collaboration. Established in 2024 as the School of Advanced Computing with a major founding investment from the Lord Foundation of California, the school is still young but already central to USC’s identity as a major technology and research institution.
According to university data, USC ranks among the national leaders in federal research funding for computer science, drawing more than $100 million annually in related research support. The Stevens School plans to grow substantially in the coming years, with dozens of new faculty hires projected as part of this initiative. That growth is expected to strengthen collaborations with USC’s other academic units, including medicine, business, communication, cinematic arts and engineering.
The Stevens gift is arriving at a moment when AI is rapidly reshaping industries and spurring significant investment in research capacity across higher education. Leading universities are racing to build AI institutes, specialized colleges of computing and major research centers that can attract top talent and large-scale grants.
Media coverage in the Los Angeles Times and other outlets has situated the Stevens donation in a broader surge of nine-figure gifts supporting AI infrastructure at research universities. Recent examples include a $750 million commitment from Michael and Susan Dell to the University of Texas at Austin to create an AI-native medical center, as well as nine-figure gifts launching new colleges of computing and AI at major public institutions.
These mega-gifts underscore how competitive the market for AI talent has become. Universities are not just competing with one another; they are vying with technology companies that can offer high salaries and immediate industry impact. In this environment, philanthropy can be a decisive factor in whether a campus becomes a global AI hub or lags behind.
USC’s leaders have been candid that the Stevens investment gives the university momentum to compete at the very top tier for AI research, teaching and industry partnerships, while also deepening its ties to Southern California’s technology and entertainment sectors. As a private research university with a prominent NCAA Division I athletics profile, USC sees this as a statement about the kind of institution it aims to be in what administrators call the “Age of AI.”
In public remarks announcing the gift, USC President Beong-Soo Kim framed AI as a powerful set of tools with enormous potential to improve lives, provided that it is developed and deployed responsibly. He argued that USC’s long-standing strengths in engineering, medicine, business and the creative arts position the university to lead at this technological inflection point.
Kim emphasized that the Stevens School is not meant to be an isolated technical silo. Instead, he described a future in which AI methods and literacy are woven into disciplines across campus, from cinematic arts and game design to policy, social work and journalism. The goal is not to replace human decision-making or creativity, he said, but to augment it with tools that can make work more efficient, more insightful and, ideally, more equitable.
This framing echoes national conversations about AI ethics and governance. Organizations like the National Academy of Engineering and policy-focused centers at universities such as Stanford and MIT have stressed the need for interdisciplinary oversight, robust evaluation of AI impacts, and strong training in responsible computing practices for students and professionals alike. USC’s initiative explicitly aligns with that trend, pairing technical investment with a commitment to ethics, trust and human-centered design.
The Stevens gift builds on nearly six decades of computing and advanced technology work at USC. Long before AI became a mainstream topic, USC researchers contributed to the design and growth of the early internet through the university’s Information Sciences Institute, a key node in the development of networking technologies that underpin today’s global communications.
Over the years, USC scholars have also helped push boundaries in computer graphics, interactive media, robotics and AI-driven systems that support communication, entertainment and defense applications. These efforts often bridged academic and industry partnerships, reflecting USC’s location in Los Angeles and its long-standing connections to the entertainment, technology and defense sectors.
Mark Stevens himself has been deeply intertwined with that trajectory. A USC alumnus with degrees in both business and engineering, he built a storied investing career at Sequoia Capital. There, he participated in early investments in companies such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube and NVIDIA, each of which played pivotal roles in the rise of internet search, online media and modern computing infrastructure.
Stevens now leads S-Cubed Capital and serves on the board of NVIDIA, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) are widely regarded as the backbone hardware of the current AI boom. That vantage point gives Stevens a front-row seat to how fast AI capabilities are advancing and how high the stakes are for institutions that want to shape, rather than simply react to, those changes.
The $200 million AI gift is not the Stevens family’s first major investment in USC. It follows a $50 million commitment that established the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which focuses on brain imaging, neurodegenerative disease research and data-intensive approaches to understanding the nervous system.
The family has also supported the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, a technology transfer hub that helps move ideas from campus laboratories into commercial applications. Additional gifts have bolstered orthobiologics work at the Keck School of Medicine and, more recently, USC Athletics’ Bloom Football Performance Center. Collectively, these investments illustrate a pattern of giving that spans both academic and athletic initiatives, reflecting a holistic interest in the university’s impact.
Sources like USC Today and coverage in higher education outlets, including Inside Higher Ed, note that this latest gift both honors that history and significantly raises the stakes. With naming rights for the Stevens School and an explicit institutional strategy attached, the donation is designed to have campuswide effects on USC’s academic portfolio and national reputation.
For students, one of the most visible outcomes of the gift will be an expansion of AI-focused academic offerings. The Stevens School oversees more than 30 AI and computing-related majors, minors and graduate programs enrolling thousands of students. USC plans to launch a new Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence this fall to meet the surging demand from undergraduates who want to build their careers around AI and data science.
At the graduate level, the school already supports a range of master’s and doctoral programs in computer science, data science and specialized AI tracks. With the Stevens funding, USC aims to strengthen connections between those programs and professional schools throughout the university, so that students in medicine, business, public policy, social work, arts and communication can learn to apply AI tools in their own domains.
The emphasis on interdisciplinary training mirrors broader trends documented by organizations such as the Computing Research Association and the National Science Foundation, which have highlighted the need for AI literacy across the workforce. As AI systems become embedded in healthcare, finance, transportation, education and creative industries, professionals who understand both domain-specific challenges and the capabilities and limits of AI will be in particularly high demand.
USC is not building its AI initiative from scratch. The Stevens School already anchors several high-profile centers and institutes that apply AI and related technologies to concrete problems. Among them:
The Stevens gift is intended to scale these and related efforts, with particular attention to four high-impact domains: health, security, business analytics and creative production. That could mean more joint appointments across schools, new research clusters, expanded student opportunities and additional partnerships with industry, government and nonprofit organizations.
Health and medicine are prominent focal points in USC’s AI plan. The university already has strengths in neuroimaging, neurodegenerative disease research and regenerative medicine, areas in which large and complex datasets are the norm. AI techniques, particularly deep learning and advanced statistical models, can help researchers analyze brain scans, genomic data and longitudinal health records to detect patterns that humans might miss.
By integrating AI methods into these domains, USC aims to support earlier diagnoses, more targeted therapies and a better understanding of how diseases progress over time. The Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, for example, can use sophisticated AI tools to map brain structure and function across large populations, which could inform the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and traumatic brain injury.
Similarly, in regenerative medicine and orthobiologics, AI can help model how tissues heal, optimize treatment plans and identify which patients are likely to respond best to particular interventions. With expanded faculty hiring and new cross-campus projects, USC is positioning itself as a major player in AI-enabled precision medicine and health analytics.
Outside of health, USC leaders highlighted national security and business analytics as key areas where AI can have immediate impact. The university’s partnerships with defense and intelligence agencies give it a natural entry point for research on cybersecurity, autonomous systems, threat detection and decision-support tools. At the same time, USC’s business and analytics programs can use AI to study markets, supply chains, risk management and customer behavior.
In Los Angeles, perhaps no sector looms larger than entertainment and the creative industries. USC’s strengths in cinematic arts, interactive media, music and game design give it an unusually rich environment for exploring how AI might transform content creation, distribution and audience engagement. Administrators are explicit that this does not mean replacing human artists with algorithms; rather, they envision AI as a collaborator that can generate ideas, enhance production workflows and power new forms of interactive storytelling.
These ambitions sit alongside intense public debate about AI’s role in creative work, including concerns about intellectual property, labor rights and cultural representation. By pairing technical research with ethics and policy scholarship, USC hopes to contribute to national and global conversations about how to balance innovation with fairness and accountability.
USC is widely known for its Trojans athletics programs, which compete at the NCAA Division I level and, more recently, within the Big Ten Conference. While the Stevens gift is academic in nature, it fits a broader institutional identity that blends research ambitions with a highly visible athletics brand.
Previous Stevens family giving to projects like the Bloom Football Performance Center underscores that connection. High-performance athletics programs are increasingly using data science and AI tools to analyze player performance, reduce injury risk and refine game strategy. Even when a gift is earmarked for academic units, the broader impact of AI capacity on campus often extends to sports performance, student-athlete support systems and the overall student experience.
For high school students and families looking at colleges, large AI-focused gifts are more than headlines. They can shape the opportunities students will have on campus, from research assistantships and internships to cutting-edge coursework and exposure to industry partners.
Students who are drawn to computing, data science or AI-powered fields might prioritize universities that:
At the same time, students in non-technical majors increasingly benefit when their campus invests in AI. A journalism student who understands how generative models work, or a social work student who can interpret algorithmic risk scores, will be better prepared for careers that intertwine with AI in subtle but powerful ways.
Families who want to compare AI-related opportunities across many campuses can use tools like the Pathley College Directory to quickly scan schools, explore academic offerings and build a shortlist based on location, size, majors and more. For athletes, Pathley’s College Fit Snapshot can provide a fast overview of how a particular college aligns with academic goals, campus vibe and athletic aspirations.
USC operates in one of the densest higher education ecosystems in the country. For students and families interested in AI, computing or technology in the Los Angeles area, there are several other notable options.
California State University, Northridge is a large public institution in the San Fernando Valley known for its broad range of undergraduate and graduate programs. CSUN has been expanding its offerings in computer science, engineering and technical fields, giving students access to applied learning opportunities in a major metropolitan region.
Another nearby option is Loyola Marymount University, a private university on LA’s Westside with growing programs in engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship, all framed by a liberal arts and Jesuit educational mission.
For students considering a highly selective public research environment, the University of California, Los Angeles offers robust programs in computer science, data science and AI-related disciplines, with strong ties to the region’s tech and entertainment employers. Students seeking a smaller, liberal arts context might also look at Occidental College, which integrates technology and data analysis across its arts and sciences curriculum.
These institutions, alongside USC, reflect how the broader LA higher education community is embracing AI and computing as central to their academic and research missions.
As AI reshapes universities, it is also changing how students discover and evaluate colleges. Instead of relying solely on rankings or word of mouth, families can now use AI-powered tools to surface schools that match their academic interests, budget, geography and, for athletes, competitive level.
Platforms like Pathley are part of that shift. Students can tap into Pathley Chat as an AI recruiting assistant to brainstorm college lists, refine academic and athletic targets, and get personalized suggestions. For student-athletes, features such as the Athletic Resume Builder turn raw stats, honors and video links into a polished, coach-ready resume in minutes.
As more campuses build AI infrastructure like USC’s Stevens School, understanding those institutional investments becomes a key part of college research. Families who factor in AI opportunities alongside traditional metrics like cost, class size and campus culture can make more informed decisions about where students are likely to thrive in a rapidly evolving job market.
USC administrators say the Stevens gift is a starting point, not a finish line. As the Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence grows, USC expects to launch new faculty clusters, degree programs, research initiatives and industry partnerships. The university also anticipates a rising number of AI-infused projects in non-technical departments, from digital humanities to public health.
Ultimately, USC’s leaders argue that universities have a unique responsibility in the AI era: to train students who can navigate both the technical and moral dimensions of powerful technologies, and to produce research that informs policy, safeguards human rights and broadens access to opportunity. With a $200 million infusion backing that mission, USC is positioning itself to be a central player in national and global debates about AI’s role in society.
For students, families and coaches tracking where higher education is headed, the Stevens gift is an illustration of how quickly the AI landscape is changing. Whether you are focused on academics, athletics or both, keeping an eye on campus investments in computing and AI can provide valuable clues about which colleges are preparing students for the world they will graduate into, not just the one that exists today.
To explore how different colleges align with your goals, you can browse the Pathley College Directory or create a free profile to start building a data-informed college list that reflects your interests, strengths and aspirations in an increasingly AI-shaped world.
