The National Science Foundation announces a $100 million grant program for state and regional AI infrastructure hubs to decentralize compute capacity.

The National Science Foundation announced a $100 million program on Tuesday for the development of state and regional artificial intelligence hubs, providing funding for research, education and workforce development in AI.

The NSF State and Regional Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Hubs program will establish flexible state and multi-state regional partnerships that may include research institutions, philanthropic organizations, state and local governments and the private sector. These hubs will build and operate cutting-edge scientific technologies for researchers, students and educators, while expanding access to infrastructure, data and other AI resources for frontier sciences.

The NSF said it plans to play a "catalytic role" through capital investment, aiding in coordination, AI infrastructure workforce development, science faculty training and curriculum development to put compute resources to work for scientific discovery.

The program follows a 122-page Trump administration report published last month titled "Science: A New Golden Age," which establishes a policy foundation for renewing America's research and development enterprise. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios called the report a roadmap for the president's science and technology priorities.

Through the initial $100 million in funding, NSF will support up to 10 AI infrastructure hubs, with only one award per state or region. In addition to combining resources across states and institutions, each hub must partner with a regional industry to align investments with science workforce development and local job market needs.

"American scientists deserve the world's best tools to enable their most ambitious work," Kratsios said. "In Science: A New Golden Age, we called for expanding access to world-class R&D infrastructure, including advanced compute, to reflect how science is conducted today. These hubs deliver on that commitment in the most practical way possible. Regional partners who share in the benefits of discovery will pool their resources to unlock compute at a scale that no individual stakeholder, and no federal program, could achieve alone."