The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $20 million grant for the expansion of NSF CloudBank.

NSF CloudBank is an initiative that provides cloud computing access to accelerate science and engineering research. With the new funding, the intitiative has entered its second phase, dubbed CloudBank 2.0.

The grant will be used to increase access to computing, AI models, and other cloud services to strengthen the US science and technology workforce.

The initiative is led by the San Diego Supercomputer Center and Information Technology Services Division at UC San Diego, in partnership with UC Berkeley's College of Computing, Data Science, and Society and the University of Washington's eScience Institute. The project also collaborates with cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Nvidia's DGX Cloud.

"CloudBank 2.0 will further our mission to expand the ecosystem of available advanced computing, data, and AI services available to the US research community - from leading research universities to smaller institutions," said NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

"By adding commercial cloud resources to NSF's offerings for researchers, NSF is committing to enhancing partnerships with the private sector. CloudBank 2.0 will leverage industry resources and expertise to strengthen public-private partnerships, accelerating innovation and scientific discovery."

A key goal of CloudBank 2.0 is to make computing more accessible to institutions with limited resources, such as community colleges and smaller universities.

“The United States must secure its position as the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies. American AI dominance is crucial to our national security and economic interests,” added OSTP principal deputy director Lynne Parker.

"To do this, we need to provide cutting-edge resources to our research community, and Cloudbank 2.0 does exactly that. Utilizing every tool in the toolbox to promote innovation and push our researchers to the next level is exactly how we’ll strength our position as the leader in artificial intelligence."

CloudBank 2.0 is also part of the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot and will serve as an interface for the contributions provided to the NAIRR Pilot by private sector partners. Partners to have been selected for the NAIRR pilot include the Neocortex AI system, and Cerebras' Condor Galaxy AI supercomputer.