Topline
Michael Dell and his wife Susan are set to make a $750 million donation to the University of Texas in Austin to fund a new medical facility and research campus he says will be built with “data and computing and AI built in.”
Michael Dell in in Austin, Texas in March 2024.
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Key Facts
The university announced Dell’s donation on Tuesday and said it will establish the UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research and the UT Dell Medical Center, as well as pay for student scholarships and housing and support the school’s supercomputing research center.
The new hospital is set to open in 2030 and will include a cancer center in partnership with MD Anderson in Houston, the world’s largest dedicated cancer center.
The medical center, on which building will start this year, will use artificial intelligence and advanced computing to enable doctors to “make better decisions earlier and coordinate care more effectively and ultimately create better outcomes,” Dell told CNBC Tuesday.
Dell, who founded Dell Technologies from his dorm room in 1984 while a student at the University of Texas in Austin, has now given more than $1 billion to the school.
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Forbes Valuation
Dell is the 13th-richest person in the world, according to Forbes. He is worth an estimated $174.8 billion.
What To Watch For
The university said it hopes to raise $10 billion over the next 10 years to support the UT Dell Medical Center, by which it aims for the new hospital to be a top-10 cancer center in the nation.
Key Background
The Dell donation ranks among the largest single gift ever to a university from a billionaire. He follows in the footsteps of Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny, who pledged to donate $2 billion to the Oregon Health & Science University for cancer research and treatment expansion, and Michael Bloomberg, who donated $1.8 billion to make admissions at Johns Hopkins University loan free and “need blind,” meaning financial aid is no longer considered in admissions and any aid given does not need to be repaid. Michael and Susan rank among the country’s most generous givers, and Forbes last year estimated the couple had given away nearly $3 billion.
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