The couple ledged $50 million to Sacramento State University to pay for state-of-the-art STEM labs and an AI center, Fortune reports. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the gift on January 28 and tied it to a major redevelopment of three vacant state office buildings on Sacramento’s Capitol Mall into a downtown campus.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are doubling down on artificial intelligence, science and STEM education through both their philanthropic and corporate investments, according to a Fortune report. Zuckerberg said the investments will strengthen communities and support the next generation of leaders and innovators. Newsom said the gift will help the school build its pipeline of talent for tech jobs, and that students need to be able to afford to live where they study.
The money from Zuckerberg and Meta will cover abatement, demolition and initial construction, and will make room for new student housing alongside academic space, including STEM facilities and the AI center.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the donation on January 28 as part of a broader plan to transform three vacant state office buildings on Sacramento’s Capitol Mall into a downtown university campus. The gift arrives as California considers a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires’ wealth. He owns a compound of 11 properties in Palo Alto’s Crescent Park neighbourhood, valued at more than $110 million, and Meta has a 57-acre headquarters campus in the area plus more than 400,000 square feet of office space in nearby Menlo Park. The Sacramento donation reflects a broader change in direction at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the philanthropic organisation launched by Zuckerberg and Chan in 2015.
The couple recently announced that the majority of CZI’s resources would be directed toward biomedical AI research, marking a shift from earlier priorities such as education and social justice initiatives. The contribution from Meta and Zuckerberg will help fund demolition, site preparation and the initial construction phase of the project. Fortune notes that several prominent billionaires, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Craft Ventures’ David Sacks, have already moved their permanent residences out of state to avoid it. Zuckerberg has made no public statement on the tax and is instead putting more money into California. The organisation has increasingly focused on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery and medical research. Central to that strategy is the Biohub network, a group of biomedical research institutes that aims to advance disease prevention and treatment through cutting-edge technologies. The latest donation also highlights how Zuckerberg’s philanthropic goals are increasingly aligned with Meta’s broader AI ambitions. Meta has committed significant resources toward developing advanced AI systems and building infrastructure to support future AI-driven products and services. Similarly, CZI is concentrating on AI-powered biomedical research, supporting work involving large-scale models for applications such as virtual cells, immune system research and disease prediction.