NSF Secures American Leadership in AI
July 29, 2025
“Artificial intelligence is key to strengthening our workforce and boosting U.S. competitiveness,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director. “Through the National AI Research Institutes, we are turning cutting-edge ideas and research into real-world solutions and preparing Americans to lead in the technologies and jobs of the future.”
Today, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with Capital One and Intel, announced a $100 million investment to support five National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes and NSF AIVO, as a central community hub. This public-private investment aligns with the White House AI Action Plan, a national initiative to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance.
AI is powering advances across nearly every sector, from helping doctors detect diseases and enabling smarter manufacturing to supporting resilient agriculture and financial security. The AI Institutes are designed to translate cutting-edge research into scalable, practical solutions that improve lives.
Accelerating open innovation. Empowering an AI-ready workforce. Strengthening U.S. global competitiveness.
The Institutes will also help build a national infrastructure for AI education and workforce development, training the next generation of researchers and practitioners, empowering educators, and reaching into communities.
This effort directly supports the goals outlined in Executive Order 14277, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” which calls for expanding AI literacy and expanding access to training and tools across all communities.
All of these AI Institutes will drive breakthroughs in high-impact areas, such as mental health, materials discovery, science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, human-AI collaboration and drug development. Each AI Institute brings a unique interdisciplinary approach that connects AI research to tangible public benefit.
With this latest round of awards, NSF continues to grow a nationwide network of now 29 AI research Institutes dedicated to advancing open innovation, strengthening U.S. competitiveness and ensuring that AI serves the public good — today and for decades to come!
NSF AI Institutes Virtual Organization (NSF AIVO)
Led by the University of California, Davis, NSF AIVO serves as a national hub for the entire AI Institutes network. Expanding on a successful pilot launched in 2022, it connects federally funded AI Institutes, government stakeholders, and the public to create a cohesive and collaborative innovation ecosystem. Through events, networking tools, and collaboration support, NSF AIVO fosters communication across the network and helps form new public-private partnerships. It also promotes public engagement by amplifying the work of the AI Institutes and raising awareness of how AI can help address real-world challenges.
“The research being done at 29 AI Institutes is being performed by about 1,000 faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and staff nationwide. This virtual organization helps the entire group achieve a vibrant national scale presence by collectively leveraging best practices and supporting new connections, education and training, and messaging.” said Steve Brown, Director and Principal Investigator (PI) for AIVO.
In its next phase, AIVO continues its five-fold mission:
- Convener across communities. This includes an annual conference and workshops for AI Institutes leadership, researchers, staff, and students, as well educational outreach to the public.
- Connector across the 29 AI Institutes. AIVO helps members of the AI Institutes community connect across Institute boundaries and collaborate.
- Collaboration Enabler. This facilitation function includes helping inter-Institute collaboration as well as helping potential new partners and collaborators connect to the AI Institutes program, to the AI Institutes, and to AIVO.
- Engage the Public. AIVO’s website, social media, and media outreach efforts convey information about the AI Institutes and their impact, fostering engagement with the program and garnering interest in AI.
- Amplify AI Institute Efforts. AIVO will share announcements and news from the AI Institutes community with all stakeholders, from government officials to the general public.
AIVO has continued to grow with the AI Institutes community, starting with 18 AI Institutes at AIVO’s founding in 2022 and growing to 25 AI Institutes. In 2024, two more AI Institutes joined the community, bringing the AI Institutes community to 27 strong.
And then there were 29.
Two New AI Institutes – NSF ARIA and NSF AI-MI
NSF AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (NSF ARIA)
Led by Brown University, NSF ARIA will accelerate the development of next-generation AI assistants that understand context and can respond in socially and emotionally smart ways. NSF ARIA aims to build cognitively informed systems that understand human reasoning, adapt to different user needs and communicate in a respectful, responsive way.
NSF AI-Materials Institute (NSF AI-MI)
Led by Cornell University, NSF AI-MI is accelerating the discovery of next-generation materials essential to energy, sustainability and quantum technologies. It will create the AI Materials Science Ecosystem, a cloud-based portal that integrates large language models with experimental data, simulations, images and scientific literature. Through partnerships with high schools, universities and industry, NSF AI-MI will educate and train students at all levels, opening new career pathways at the intersection of AI and physical sciences.
Continuing Work at NSF IFML, NSF iSAT, and NSF MMLI
NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (NSF IFML)
NSF IFML is part of the first cohort of AI Institutes announced in 2020. Led by The University of Texas at Austin, the new award will build on the trajectory of the past five years and develop new foundational tools to advance generative AI. NSF IFML’s work on diffusion models is a key technology behind major Google products, powering widely used generative models such as Stable Diffusion 3 and Flux.
In its next phase, NSF IFML will expand generative AI to new domains, including protein engineering and clinical imaging. It also plans to develop new methods to handle noisy data and improve model reliability, key challenges for deploying AI in health contexts.
NSF Institute for Student AI-Teaming (NSF iSAT)
Led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, NSF iSAT — part of the first cohort of AI Institutes announced in 2020 — is transforming how AI is used to enhance STEM learning in the classroom. The Institute developed two AI partners that help student groups learn together by facilitating discussion, exploration and reasoning, in close collaboration with teachers. More than 6,000 middle-school students and educators have benefited from these tools and new AI curricula.
In its next phase, NSF iSAT will address the urgent national need to build an AI-ready workforce. It will continue to advance AI support for group learning and co-develop a semester-long curriculum to build AI literacy.
NSF Molecule Maker Lab Institute (NSF MMLI)
Led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, NSF MMLI is part of the first cohort of AI Institutes announced in 2020. The Institute has been developing cutting-edge AI and machine learning to dramatically speed up molecule discovery and creation for applications in medicine, materials and clean energy.
In its next phase, the Institute will develop advanced AI tools — including new types of language models and intelligent agents — that can reason, predict and help design useful molecules such as drugs, catalysts and new materials.
Learn More about the NSF National AI Research Institutes Program
To learn more about all the awards and National AI Research Institutes collaborators, see the interactive map in the NSF press release.
Learn more about the AI Institutes at nsf.gov.
