The University of Chicago received a $50 million gift from trustee Rika Mansueto and her husband, Joe Mansueto, to create an interdisciplinary faculty initiative focused on AI expertise across fields. The funding launches the Mansueto Faculty of Mind and Machine Challenge, which aims to recruit and support 20 scholars and ultimately raise nearly $200 million. The university said the initiative will assemble a diverse cohort of faculty using AI approaches in areas ranging from the arts and social sciences to medicine, business, and law. It also plans to use the gift to strengthen AI research and education investments beyond the initial scholar cohort. UChicago President Paul Alivisatos praised the gift as advancing intellectual freedom and scholarship at a “signal period” in modern research, while Rika Mansueto said the work must be grounded in human judgment, responsibility, and purpose—not only technical performance. For the higher education sector, the donation represents a major institutional bet on recruiting AI-skilled faculty and building interdisciplinary AI governance and teaching capacity across the curriculum.