USC Receives $200 Million Gift to Create New School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence

Mark Stevens and his wife Mary are donating $200 million to launch a universitywide AI initiative at the University of Southern California, the school announced on Tuesday. The gift is one of the largest in USC’s 146-year history. In recognition, USC’s School of Advanced Computing housed within the Viterbi School of Engineering will be renamed the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.

U.S. Army–affiliated research center that uses AI for military training simulations, and support USC’s new bachelor’s degree in artificial intelligence and its AI for Business program. The donation will also fund the recruitment of AI researchers and back work spanning health sciences, security, business, and the arts.

Mark Stevens, 66, is a USC alum who earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and economics from USC in 1981 and a master’s in computer engineering from the school in 1984. He went on to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1989. He joined Sequoia Capital that same year, became a partner in 1993, and led Sequoia’s investment in Nvidia that year.

During his time at Sequoia, Stevens was part of the team behind early bets on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Nvidia. He left Sequoia Capital to start S-Cubed Capital in 2012 and now runs the family office in Menlo Park, Calif. 5 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He also owns a stake in the Golden State Warriors NBA team. Stevens has served on USC’s Board of Trustees since 2001. Mark and Mary Stevens gave $50 million to USC in 2015 to endow the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which uses imaging tech to study Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injury.

The couple made earlier naming gifts for the USC Stevens Center for Innovation and the Stevens Academic Center for student-athletes. In 2013, Mark and Mary Stevens signed the Giving Pledge.

There were four options: 1) give it to your kids (we have three), 2) let the government take it from you and redistribute it, 3) spend with reckless abandon or 4) donate virtually all of it to causes and organizations that we feel could make a difference in the world. ” “We know the next great universities will be those that invest in computing. This is a key moment,” Mark Stevens said.

The donation arrives as several other billionaires have made large gifts to American universities to advance AI research. Last month, Michael and Susan Dell donated $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin to fund a medical center built from the ground up around AI, pushing the Dells’ total UT Austin giving past $1 billion.

5 million to its engineering school, with a portion earmarked for AI and quantum engineering research.

Stephen Schwarzman put $350 million into MIT in 2018 to launch the Schwarzman College of Computing. Fortune reported that Stevens told the Los Angeles Times that schools risk falling behind if they don’t move fast on AI, especially as much of the cutting-edge research has migrated to private companies.