Google collaboration positions Purdue at forefront of AI-driven innovation

Purdue President Mung Chiang and Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector, both participated in the Google-Purdue AI Summit in November. A new partnership between Purdue and Google will enhance AI-enabled education. (Purdue University file photo/John Underwood)

Deepening and broadening long-standing collaborations, Purdue University and Google Public Sector on Monday (Jan. 12) announced a strategic partnership designed to advance AI-enabled education, accelerate AI innovation and expand AI workforce development.

Redefining collaboration between higher education and the technology industry, this partnership establishes a new standard for the modern campus’s relationship with the private sector. By empowering the entire Purdue community to integrate AI into multiple facets of the university, this multiyear strategic commitment provides students, faculty and researchers with Google Cloud’s full AI-optimized tech stack and high-performance computing power in a rapidly evolving and broadly impactful field.

“This partnership with Google is a paradigm shift in academic-industry collaboration. Beyond the basic type of agreements, this alliance offers comprehensive access and opportunities to the Purdue community that are rarely extended to academic institutions and places us in a very select category among top-tier research universities in the age of AI,” said Purdue President Mung Chiang. “Purdue will continue to form industry partnerships and lead across the entire AI tech stack: from applications to data and models, from compute capabilities and semiconductor to power grid and SMR.”

The Purdue Board of Trustees’ Finance and Executive committees approved the strategic partnership across several key areas:

A five-year commitment to the Google Partnership for Accelerated Research (GPAR) program. This will enable Purdue students, faculty, researchers and staff access to Google Cloud’s AI enterprise tools and software.
Collaboration on an AI competency graduation requirement, which was approved by the Purdue Board of Trustees on Dec. 12.
Access to Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), boosting the university’s capacity for innovation.
Trusted tester program access to Google DeepMind’s co-scientist, a multi-agent AI system built with Gemini to help scientists generate novel hypotheses and research proposals.
The creation of the Google AI Hub space within Purdue’s Hall of Data Science and AI as a dynamic campus space where students and researchers connect to spark hands-on collaboration and breakthrough innovation.

“AI is a catalyst for scientific breakthroughs,” said Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector. “By providing Purdue with Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure and TPUs, we are empowering researchers to tackle global challenges with unprecedented speed. This collaboration helps ensure researchers, students and educators are using the most advanced AI, while preparing the next generation to lead an AI-driven workforce.”

The collaboration magnifies Purdue’s recently unveiled broad strategy of AI@Purdue, which spans five functional areas: Learning with AI, Learning about AI, Researching AI, Using AI and Partnering in AI.

Approved by Purdue’s Board of Trustees in its Dec. 12 meeting, the Learning about AI part of AI@Purdue makes Purdue the nation’s first major university to introduce an “AI working competency” graduation requirement for all undergraduate students on the main campus (Indianapolis and West Lafayette).

During the 2025 Google-Purdue AI Summit held in November, the partners announced a shared goal of deeper collaboration in AI — one that combines education and research to prepare the next generation of AI leaders.

“This extraordinary collaboration establishes a new benchmark for how leading research universities and innovative technology enterprises can advance scientific discovery in concert,” said Dimitrios Peroulis, Purdue’s senior vice president for partnerships and online. “Our students will learn from and work with technologies that represent the forefront of AI development, and they’ll do so within an educational framework that emphasizes both innovation and responsible use.”

The Purdue Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee, which met in public session on Dec. 23, has the authority to act for the full board in periods between regularly scheduled meetings.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 106,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 57,000 at our main campus locations in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 14 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its integrated, comprehensive Indianapolis urban expansion; the Mitch Daniels School of Business; Purdue Computes; and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Media contact: Trevor Peters, peter237@purdue.edu