The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is progressing quickly. However, the expenses involved in developing and researching advanced AI models have surpassed the budgets of university labs and federally funded researchers.
This growing divide limits the topics that academic researchers can investigate, despite their historic role in pioneering foundational breakthroughs that contribute to today’s AI models.
In response, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a partnership with Nvidia to develop models that will enhance the ability of American scientists to leverage AI, thus advancing discovery and ensuring U.S. leadership in AI-powered research and innovation.
This project will pave the way for a future paradigm of AI-accelerated scientific discovery, supporting reliable and rigorous science while building an innovation ecosystem that benefits all Americans.
According to a press release, the NSF will contribute $75 million. Nvidia will provide an additional $77 million to support the Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure to Accelerate Science (OMAI) project, led by the Allen Institute for AI.
OMAI will accelerate breakthroughs across materials science, biology, energy and more.
The initiative will also work to build a national AI-ready workforce, supporting training efforts that expand participation and expertise beyond traditional tech hubs and strengthening America’s competitiveness in AI and other vital technologies.
NSF’s funding comes through its Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure program, which supports high-impact, community-driven projects that bridge the gap between individual research grants and large-scale national facilities.
This public-private investment aligns with the priorities outlined in the White House AI Action Plan, which aims to accelerate AI-enabled science and ensure the United States produces leading open models that enhance its global dominance in AI.
With this support, the Allen Institute for AI will develop open-source, multimodal large language models trained on scientific data and literature.
These tools will empower American researchers and developers to process and analyze research more quickly, generate code and visualizations, and connect new insights to past discoveries, thereby accelerating breakthroughs in materials science, biology, energy, and more.
In collaboration with the NSF and the Allen Institute for AI, this project will accelerate innovation with infrastructure that enables U.S. scientists to generate limitless intelligence, making it America’s most potent and renewable resource.
Initial applications of the Allen Institute for AI’s work will include breakthroughs to accelerate the discovery of new materials, improve protein function prediction for biomedical advancements, and address core weaknesses in today’s large language models.
NSF and @NVIDIA are developing a fully open suite of advanced AI models to support the U.S. scientific community, the OMAI project. OMAI will accelerate breakthroughs across materials science, biology, energy and more. https://t.co/M57aQ1TSbV pic.twitter.com/TUWpLesFxO
— U.S. National Science Foundation (@NSF) August 14, 2025
With fresh support of $75M from @NSF and $77M from @NVIDIA, we’re set to scale our open model ecosystem, bolster the infrastructure behind it, and fast‑track reproducible AI research to unlock the next wave of scientific discovery. 💡 pic.twitter.com/xjRXuk5yg1
— Ai2 (@allen_ai) August 14, 2025
We're partnering with the @NSF to accelerate scientific discovery.
Together, we’re supporting @allen_ai's OMAI initiative, building an open multimodal #AI ecosystem and empowering the next generation of researchers to advance U.S. leadership in science and engineering.
Read… pic.twitter.com/o6itH7LAhH
— NVIDIA AI (@NVIDIAAI) August 14, 2025
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