The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received $100 million in private gift commitments for its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, which is set to launch on July 1, 2026.
The donations come from what’s referred to as the Catalyst Collective — a group of alumni, business leaders and corporate partners who have pledged major investments in the college. The alumni donors include Andy Konwinski, cofounder of Laude, Databricks and Perplexity AI; John Morgridge, former chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, and Tashia Morgridge, a retired special education teacher; Signe Ostby, a former marketing executive; and Jeff Tangney, cofounder and CEO of Doximity. The contributors also include Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit; and Epic, a software company based in Verona, Wisconsin.
Approved last December by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, the college is the first academic division created at UW–Madison in over 40 years. The new unit will include existing UW degree programs in computer sciences, data science, statistics, library science, and information science.
