// Hello, world

By Andy Konwinski

Computer scientists stand at a hinge moment. Engineered intelligence is no longer theoretical. The systems we build today will shape how billions of people live, work, and relate to one another. Whether AI moves society forward or divides it depends on who is doing the building, and why.

Today, June 23, 2025, marks the launch of Laude Institute, a new kind of organization built by and for computer science researchers. We exist to catalyze work that doesn't just push the field forward but guides it towards more beneficial outcomes. We help get ideas out of the lab and into the world by giving the right resources to the right researchers at the right time.

This is the most personal project of my life, and it's been a long time coming.

I arrived at UC Berkeley in 2007 for a PhD in Computer Science, inspired by a legacy of research that shaped generations of computing, from the Internet's early protocols to BSD and RISC architecture. In my first year, I teamed up with Matei Zaharia to improve the Hadoop compute engine. We didn't just write a paper. We shipped the work back into open source. That experience reshaped my idea of what it means to be a computer scientist.

That was the beginning of a line of research that would give birth to Apache Spark. Spark became Databricks. And I took away a clear lesson: breakthrough ideas matter, but only if you ship them. For years, I've wanted to build something that would help more researchers take that journey from idea to impact. That something is Laude Institute, which we're shipping to the world today.

I'm betting $100 million that it can help computer scientists create more upside impact for humanity.

Laude Institute is a nonprofit with a public benefit corporation operating arm. That lets us move quickly and pay competitively for top talent while remaining meritocratic and benefitting from the collective experience of our board and advisors who have shipped immeasurable impact from their research into the world already. I've committed $100 million to get it off the ground, with additional financial support from a growing community of technologists who believe in this mission (reach out if you want to help).

Our goal is simple: get more world-changing research into people's hands. We convene, resource, and amplify a growing community of computer scientists focused on real-world impact.

We're starting with two flagship initiatives: Slingshots and Moonshots. Slingshots support early-stage research with fast grants and hands-on help. Our first, Terminal-Bench, a collaboration with Stanford researchers, shipped last month and was one of two benchmarks cited by Dario Amodei during the release of Anthropic's Claude 4 just days after its release. From idea to industry-standard benchmark in 126 days. That is the kind of velocity we exist to enable.

Moonshots back long-horizon labs tackling species-level challenges like AI for scientific discovery, civic discourse, healthcare, and workforce reskilling. The initiative emerged from the Shaping AI project I co-authored with Dave Patterson, Jeff Dean, John Hennessy, and others. Our conclusion was clear: focused effort today can maximize the upsides of AI and minimize the risks for everyone. Applications are now open for our first batch of Moonshot seed grantees, we will scale the most promising with multi-year, multi-million dollar labs. This is how we help our best AI researchers take on humanity's hardest problems.

We also fund foundational work that advances computing itself. Our inaugural flagship grant is anchoring the forthcoming AI Systems Lab at UC Berkeley, led by Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia, Joey Gonzalez, Raluca-Ada Popa, and others.

Beyond providing researchers with the resources they need to run hard, Laude Institute also amplifies the efforts of this community. We work with researchers to connect their work to real-world deployment, to elevate their voice in the public conversation, and to lead culturally as well as technically. We think more computer scientists should take the mic.

We also convene people. And this one's important to me. As a computer scientist with a PhD from UC Berkeley, it took me a while to own that perhaps my most valuable talent is in bringing people together. I did that at Databricks, I did that at Perplexity, and I did that last week, when 70 of the leading AI researchers on the planet convened in San Francisco for a full day of open, unscripted conversation at the very first Ship Your Research Summit.

Laude Institute itself is a product of bringing the right people together. This organization was co-founded by a small group of deeply committed technologists: Chris Rytting, K. Tighe, Justin Fiedler, and Lindsey Gregory. Each brings rare functional expertise and a shared conviction about what this moment demands. Our early team also includes founding advisors Pete Sonsini and Andrew Krioukov, and founding MoTS Alex Shaw.

We're guided by board members I'm honored to work with: Dave Patterson, Jeff Dean, and Joelle Pineau. We're supported by an extraordinary group of research advisors from academia and industry, including Jake Abernethy, Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, Jon Barron, Jennifer Chayes, Yejin Choi, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar, Trevor Darrell, Alex Dimakis, Georgia Gkioxari, Brighten Godfrey, Ali Ghodsi, Kurtis Heimerl, John Hennessy, Sanmi Koyejo, Ludwig Schmidt, Ion Stoica, Ameet Talwalkar, Reynold Xin, Denis Yarats, and Matei Zaharia.

Our community already includes some of the smartest computer scientists creating impact today, across career stages and institutions. If you're part of this movement or want to be, join us. Attend an event. Apply for funding. Bring your ideas, your feedback, your ambition. Tell your peers. Help us build what this moment deserves.

And most importantly, ship your research.