The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a $100 million program to create up to 10 State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs across the country, aiming to broaden access to computing resources for researchers and students. The initiative addresses a growing gap in AI infrastructure access that limits who can participate in AI-driven scientific discovery.
The hubs will function as regional consortia that combine contributions from state and local governments, academic institutions, private industry and philanthropy. NSF will fund coordination, workforce development and faculty training, while partners provide the compute hardware and operational support.
"Artificial intelligence is transforming how we conduct research, accelerate scientific discovery and address complex challenges across disciplines," said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director. "The State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs program supports a national mission to advance AI for science by expanding access to critical AI resources, strengthening state and regional ecosystems, and developing the workforce capabilities needed to harness these technologies."
Regional hubs for shared AI resources
Each hub will serve a single state or multistate region, pooling resources from institutions large and small. NSF encourages hubs to connect with the National AI Research Resource, which the agency leads, to share datasets and expand compute capacity beyond what any single partner could provide. The program supports the White House-led AI for Science initiative, and hubs are urged to work with existing groups such as the Campus Research Computing Consortium for workforce development.
"American scientists deserve the world's best tools to enable their most ambitious work," said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Regional partners who share in the benefits of discovery will pool their resources to unlock compute at a scale that no individual institution or federal program could achieve alone."
Workforce and education components
NSF will invest in AI infrastructure professionals who can support researchers, students and educators in using compute systems for scientific discovery. The program also funds faculty training and curriculum development to build AI skills for scientific research, supporting broader efforts in AI for Education. Each hub will partner with regional industry to align workforce training with local job market needs.
Private sector and philanthropic support
Several organizations have indicated they intend to support hub participants, including NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Dell Technologies, Hangar and the Secunda Innovation Fund. NSF said it welcomes additional organizations to join the program.
Why this matters for science and research professionals
For researchers at institutions without their own high-end AI compute, these hubs could provide the access needed to apply machine learning to fields from materials science to genomics. For those already in well-resourced labs, the hubs create new opportunities to share datasets and collaborate across regions. The workforce training component also signals growing demand for professionals who can manage and support scientific AI infrastructure - a role that will become more common outside of traditional computer science departments. This initiative is part of a broader push for AI for Science & Research that the White House outlined in its July 2026 report, which calls for renewing national R&D infrastructure to match how science is conducted today.
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