Billionaire Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix Inc., is donating $50 million to his alma mater Bowdoin College — one of the richest U.S. liberal-arts colleges — to create an initiative for artificial intelligence and humanity.
The gift — the largest since the Maine college was founded in 1794 — won’t develop AI technology but, rather, will be used to provide “a step forward in higher education’s growing role to provide ethical frameworks for technology and will ensure that Bowdoin students graduate well-prepared to lead in a world reshaped by AI,” the school said in a statement Monday.
The money initially will fund 10 new faculty positions in a range of disciplines, support faculty who want to “incorporate and interrogate” AI in their teaching and lead conversations about the uses of AI and the changes and challenges it will bring, Bowdoin said in the statement.
“The donation seeks to advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating wisdom for the common good by deepening the college’s engagement with one of humanity’s most transformative developments: artificial intelligence,” Hastings said in the statement.
Hastings, who also earned a master’s degree in artificial intelligence at Stanford University in 1988, co-founded Netflix in 1997 and became executive chairman in 2023 after 25 years as CEO. He has a net worth of about $6.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. About 2,000 students attend Bowdoin, which has an endowment of $2.6 billion.