Microsoft and partners invest $72 million to launch AI Hub in New Jersey

At the end of 2023, the state of New Jersey and Princeton University announced plans to establish an AI Hub in collaboration with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) to drive regional job growth and advance AI developments. Now, Microsoft and Coreweave are joining in on the venture.

Also: 93% of IT leaders will implement AI agents in the next two years

On Friday, Governor Phil Murphy and Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber released a statement announcing that Microsoft and CoreWeave, the cloud infrastructure company, are joining as founding partners of the NJ AI Hub. Jointly, the partners and the state of New Jersey are expected to invest over $72 million. 

Located in Princeton, NJ on space provided by Princeton University, the hub will be a site of world-class research, innovation, education, and workforce development, according to the statement. The AI Hub will feature an AI accelerator to host cohorts of startup-ventures and provide them with support, mentorship, workspace, compute power, legal assistance, and more. 

“By leveraging the strengths of the private sector, Princeton, and the state of New Jersey, our goal is to build a thriving regional AI economy that not only drives economic growth, but sets a new standard for research, development, and workforce development,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft.

Also: Copilot’s powerful new ‘Think Deeper’ feature is free for all users – how it works

Additionally, Microsoft will be bringing its TechSpark program, a program launched in 2017 to foster inclusive job and economic opportunities across the US, to the AI Hub. This is part of the AI Hub’s larger mission to develop high-quality talent through different education opportunities, projects, teaching tools, apprenticeships, training, and more with schools and employers. 

This isn’t the first partnership of this kind, with many organizations working to develop similar AI incubators across the country. For example, the state of California and Nvidia paired up in August to launch an AI training program meant to train 100,000 residents.