The University of Texas at Austin announced Tuesday that Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, will fund the UT Dell Medical Center with a $750 million donation aimed at expanding the university’s medical research ambitions and improving patient care using artificial intelligence.
University officials said the planned “AI-native” hospital is projected to open in 2030, and that UT expects to break ground this fall on the first phase of what school leaders described as the country’s first “AI-native” hospital. UT characterized the broader project as a new 300-plus-acre advanced research campus that the medical center will crown as the centerpiece.
The gift would also make the Dells the first University of Texas donors to give more than $1 billion, the university said. The couple has backed the Austin campus for more than two decades, including support for computer science education, the medical school and scholarships for students with the most significant financial need.
Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at about $170 billion, said the next step was investing further in Central Texas. “I was born in Texas. My wife was born in Texas. This is our home,” Dell told The Associated Press, adding that “building a stronger health system here, more innovation and helping to support the growth and stability of the region” is important.
Dell Medical School dean Claudia Lucchinetti, who is also UT’s senior vice president for medical affairs, said the project offers an unusual opportunity to incorporate AI into a hospital built for it rather than applying new technology to older infrastructure. She said the medical center’s model will use technology to support the patient-doctor relationship and make care “feel simpler and more human.”
Lucchinetti described an approach she said would use “ambient” AI as an “intelligent member of the care team,” including taking notes so clinicians can treat patients more directly. She also said the system could help identify biometric patterns and early signs of cancer before they are obvious to the naked eye, with the overall goal of moving from a reactive, fragmented system toward a predictive model that is more seamless.
UT Austin said the donation would support undergraduate scholarships, student housing and the Texas Advanced Computing Center, where officials are building the nation’s largest academic supercomputer with Dell’s AI infrastructure. The university also said it plans to collaborate with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to bring top specialists for complex conditions.
The announcement landed amid a broader U.S. pattern in which private higher education support continues but is increasingly concentrated, according to the Voluntary Support of Education survey cited by the Associated Press. Colleges raised a record $78 billion last year, the report found, but nearly 90% of the money came from just 2% of donors.
Rutgers University Associate Dean for Research Marybeth Gasman said she was “excited” by what she called strong support for a public institution as public funding declines amid politicized attacks on higher education. She said she hopes major gifts like the Dells’ will encourage other donations, citing evidence that giving often follows high-profile contributions, and that “Higher education, quite frankly, could really use it right now.”