VIENNA, Jan 13 – The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has received a €5 million donation from Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Garrett Camp to support research into trustworthy, human-centred artificial intelligence.

Camp, co-founder of ride-hailing app Uber and founder of the non-profit Camp, visited ISTA’s campus on Jan. 13 to sign the agreement with President Martin Hetzer and Managing Director Georg Schneider.

“With this generous gift, ISTA can further build upon fundamental research in artificial intelligence, drawing on our strengths in computer science, mathematics, and the natural sciences,” Hetzer said in a statement.

The donation marks Camp’s first contribution to a European research institution. He said the gift reflects his belief that future AI breakthroughs will come from ecosystems prioritising rigor, collaboration and long-term impact. “Global solutions demand global perspectives and collaboration,” Camp said.

ISTA, founded in 2009, hosts about 90 research groups across natural sciences, mathematics and computer science, with plans to expand to 150 groups over the next decade. Its AI research spans areas including trustworthy AI, sustainable models, causal learning, privacy-preserving training of large language models, and experimentally guided protein structure prediction.

Niklas Schmidt of Wolf Theiss Attorneys-at-Law, which advised on the donation, said the gift underscored “the excellence of the Austrian research landscape.”