Michael and Susan Dell donate $750 million for UT Austin medical campus

Michael and Susan Dell announced Tuesday that they have committed $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin to fund the development of a new medical center and research campus.

The billionaire CEO told CNBC that the new medical center, which will include a hospital and research center, will use artificial intelligence and advanced computing to provide faster and more precise treatment to patients.

“There are many medical centers,” Dell said in an interview. “But what you get with the ability to create something new is you can design it from the ground up with built-in data, calculations and AI. This allows you to make better decisions sooner, coordinate care more effectively and ultimately create better outcomes.”

The university plans to break ground on the Dell Medical Center later this year and open the facility in 2030. The new medical campus will also include a cancer center, already under development. The Dells’ gift will also fund scholarships and UT’s supercomputing center.

The couple’s gift is one of the largest ever made to a U.S. public university. Dell founded his eponymous technology company from his dorm room at UT Austin in 1984, while he was a medical student. He dropped out of UT Austin before his sophomore year.

“I view this as the next step in a timeline that goes back to when my parents sent me to UT to become a doctor,” he said. “Obviously that part didn’t work, but I never stopped thinking about it.”

With this latest commitment, the couple has contributed more than $1 billion in total to UT Austin, including an initial $50 million gift to create the Dell Medical School in 2013. Their foundation also gave $25 million to create Austin’s first pediatric hospital in 2007.

Nvidia Billionaire investor Tench Coxe and his wife, Simone, both Austin residents, donated $100 million in January to the new academic medical center.

Dell said he and his wife have stepped up their giving as Austin’s population has grown. The metro area’s population has nearly doubled since 2000 and was last estimated to reach nearly 2.6 million people in 2024, according to city data.

Investing in Austin’s health system means residents can get care closer to home, Dell said.

“My perspective on this is as a parent and as an employer. You know, years ago, if there was a health issue, you didn’t stay in Austin. You went to Houston or Dallas,” he said. “And that’s becoming less and less true, and now Austin is becoming a destination for special surgeries and difficult procedures, and that’s attracting that kind of talent.”

The Dells have stepped up their charitable giving in recent months, committing $6.25 billion in December to fund the “Trump accounts” of 25 million American children. The couple’s philanthropic commitments total more than $10 billion to date, according to their foundation.

“The scale has increased as we have had more capacity to make a greater impact,” Dell said of their philanthropy. “We want to do it while we’re still here – and we’re still here – and so there’s a lot to do.”

Patient advocacy groups and healthcare professionals have raised concerns about the use of AI in healthcare, such as data privacy risks and the potential for bias.

Dell said it prioritizes AI’s ability to help healthcare professionals rather than replace or hinder them.

“You need to have the right kind of controls and standards around privacy and security,” he said. “At the end of the day, they’re just tools. And they’re very powerful, they’re amazing, and they’re going to continue to get better, but I still think it’s extremely important to have that human judgment.”