Andy Konwinski, a computer scientist and co-founder of Databricks and Perplexity, announced Monday that his personal company, Laude, is establishing a new AI lab that supports his $100 million dollar pledge.
The Laude Institute appears to be not an AI lab, but a fund that is trying to form an investment just like grants. In addition to Konwinski, the institute's board includes Professor Dave Patterson, Professor UC Berkeley (known for his award-winning series of research), Jeff Dean (known as Google's Chief Scientist), and Joelle Pineau (vice president of AI Research, Meta).
Konwinski announces the institute's first “flagship” grant, which costs $3 million a year, for five years, and pins UC Berkeley's new AI Systems Lab. This is a new lab led by one of Berkeley's famous Aeon Stoicka, the current director of Sky Computing Labs. Stoica is also co-founder of Startup Anyscale (the AI and Python platform) and AI big data company Databricks, both Tech, developed in Berkeley's lab system.
The new AI Systems Lab is set to open in 2027, and in addition to Stoica, many other well-known researchers will be included.
In his blog post, which published the Institute, Konwinski described its mission as “built by computer science researchers, and we exist to catalyze works that not only advance the field, but also guide more towards more beneficial results.”
It is not necessarily a direct excavation at Openai, which began as an AI research facility. However, other researchers have also fallen prey to the temptation of money.
For example, popular AI researcher Epoch faced controversy when Openai revealed that it was used to support the creation of one of its AI benchmarks and to present a new O3 model. The founders of Epoch have launched a startup with a controversial mission to replace all human workers with AI agents everywhere.
Like other AI research institutes with commercial ambitions, Konwinski formed his institute across boundaries. As a nonprofit organization with the management division of public benefits companies.
He divides his research investment into two buckets, which he calls “slingshot and moonshot.” Slingshots are for early stage research where you can benefit from grants and practical help. Moonshot, as the name suggests, is because of “a long-distance lab that tackles species-level challenges like AI for scientific discovery, civic discourse, healthcare and reskilling of the workforce.”
For example, his lab works with “Terminal Bench,” a Stanford-led benchmark on how well AI agents handle the tasks that humanity uses.
One thing to note is that Konwinski's company Laude is not just a grant writing laboratory. He also co-founded a for-profit venture fund launched in 2024. The fund is co-foundered by former Nea VC Pete Sonsini. As TechCrunch previously reported, Laude led a $12 million investment in AI Agent Infrastructure Startup Arcade. Other startups also quietly supported us.
A large spokesman says while Konwinski pledges $100 million, he is also looking for investments from other successful technicians, and is open. On how Konwinski has accumulated enough fortune to guarantee $100 million for this new effort: Databricks closed its $15.3 billion funding round in January, valued the company at $62 billion. Last month's embarrassment also secured a $14 billion valuation.
Does the world need yet another AI “good for humanity” research? No, yes.
Research on AI is becoming increasingly confusing. For example, there has been a wealth of AI benchmarks recently designed to prove that a particular vendor's model works best. (Even Salesforce has its own LLM benchmark for CRMS.)
Supporting truly independent research, which can eventually turn into independent human-focused commercial transactions, could become an attractive alternative.