AI finds an unlikely benefactor: Blackstone CEO Schwarzman

The newly christened Schwarzman College of Computing at the MIT is set to open at the end of April

- MIRIAM GOTTFRIED

Blackstone hired its first data scientist in 2015 and now has 50 of them working across various business lines

A chance encounter in 2015 led Steve Schwarzman, the septuagenarian private-equity billionaire, to become one of the biggest and most unlikely champions of artificial intelligence.

On a bus ride in Beijing with other global business leaders, the Blackstone chief executive happened to sit next to Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, who started talking about AI. The technology, he explained, would soon change drug development and education and reshape how people across all industries do their jobs.

Nine years later, Schwarzman, 77 years old, might be the biggest individual funder of AI education and research, having pledged more than half a billion dollars to the effort.

The newly christened Schwarzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is set to open at the end of April. At Oxford University, the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities houses an institute for the study of the ethics of AI. They represent Schwarzman’s two biggest donations on record—a $350 million gift to MIT in 2018 followed by a grant to Oxford that ultimately totaled over £190 million, equivalent to roughly $240 million.

Schwarzman, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $37.7 billion, has also advocated for the technology in Washington. A major Republican donor, he worked behind the scenes to help secure passage of the Chips and Science Act of 2022. Schwarzman was particularly interested in the funding it provided for areas such as AI and quantum computing and the $80 billion-plus authorized for the National Science Foundation.

Advancing AI is an unlikely focus for a Wall Street power player who has multiple secretaries to place his phone calls and says email is his favorite app.