The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a $152 million partnership to develop artificial intelligence models aimed at transforming scientific research in America. The project, known as the Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure to Accelerate Science (OMAI), will be led by the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) in Seattle. NSF will contribute $75 million to the effort, with additional contributions of $77 million from chip manufacturing company Nvidia.
The goal is to create a fully open suite of advanced AI models specifically designed for the U.S. scientific community. “Bringing AI into scientific research has been a game changer,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director. “NSF is proud to equip America’s scientists with the tools to accelerate breakthroughs.”
Rapid advancements in AI technologies have made the cost of creating powerful AI models prohibitively expensive for university labs and federally funded researchers.
This partnership aims to bridge that gap by creating open-source, multimodal large language models trained on scientific data and literature. “As called for in the AI Action Plan, this partnership demonstrates the power of the American innovation ecosystem,” said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The initiative will also focus on building a national AI-ready workforce by supporting training efforts that expand expertise beyond traditional tech hubs.
Nvidia joins NSF for AI research
This is expected to strengthen American competitiveness in AI and other critical technologies. “AI is the engine of modern science,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.
“In collaboration with NSF and Ai2, we’re accelerating innovation with state-of-the-art infrastructure that empowers U.S. scientists to generate limitless intelligence.”
Initial applications of Ai2’s work will include AI breakthroughs that accelerate the discovery of new materials, improve protein function prediction for biomedical advancements, and address core weaknesses in today’s large language models. “Fully-open AI is not just a preference — it’s a necessity,” said Ali Farhadi, CEO of Ai2. “For the U.S. to continue leading the next era of scientific and technological discovery, we must create open, collaborative ecosystems where researchers and developers can work together to improve and expand these systems.”
NSF’s contributions will also support research teams from the University of Washington, the University of Hawaii at Hilo, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of New Mexico.
The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo (UH-Hilo) is set to receive over $1.4 million as part of the OMAI project. Travis Mandel, PhD, an associate professor of Computer Science and coordinator of the Data Science program at UH-Hilo, serves as co-principal investigator on the project and will co-lead the adaptation and community engagement efforts. “Our Data Science students will gain invaluable hands-on experience with these systems, whether it be studying how well the AI meets the needs of local scientists or implementing improved training methods to provide better and more reliable assistance with challenging scientific tasks,” Mandel stated.
The project will integrate cutting-edge AI infrastructure directly into UH-Hilo’s academic programs, offering students exceptional opportunities to contribute to fully open, ethical, and nationally significant AI systems. They will work alongside Mandel and other AI researchers through summer internships and year-round projects, building and evaluating AI models that could revolutionize scientific discovery across multiple disciplines.
