UT Austin lands $750M for medical, research campus project

Billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, committed $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin (UT) on April 21, pushing their lifetime giving to the university past $1 billion. The investment is set to fund a new medical center and research campus, more student housing, expanded scholarship support and added capacity at UT’s supercomputing facilities. 

The commitment from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation makes the couple UT Austin’s first billion-dollar donors and ranks among the largest philanthropic gifts ever made to a U.S. university, according to UT. 

The gift will establish two linked capital projects in Northwest Austin: the UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research, which spans more than 300 acres, and the 27-acre UT Dell Medical Center within it. The broader campus is intended to bring UT’s research operations, advanced computing and clinical care onto a single footprint, with artificial intelligence and data infrastructure embedded into clinical workflows from the outset. 

Final dimensions for the medical center have not been set, but plans call for a hospital tower with about 300 to 500 beds, outpatient clinics and round-the-clock emergency care. 

MD Anderson Cancer Center services will also be integrated into the new medical center, giving Central Texas patients access to clinical trials and complex cancer treatment without traveling to Houston. MD Anderson leadership said thousands of area residents made that trip for cancer care in the past year. 

The new facility will not replace Dell Seton Medical Center downtown, which will remain the region’s main trauma hospital. According to UT, Austin has been the largest U.S. city without a comprehensive academic medical center. 

UT tied the announcement to broader targets, including raising $10 billion over 10 years and placing among the top 10 medical centers nationally. 

Groundbreaking on the UT Dell Medical Center is expected later this year, with the facility slated to open in 2030 anchored by the hospital tower, outpatient services and emergency departments. Additional specialty services, covering areas such as heart care, complex multi-system cases and uncommon diseases, will come online in stages through 2032. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is leading the design. 

Beyond the capital projects, the investment expands undergraduate scholarships, supports student housing and adds capacity at UT’s Texas Advanced Computing Center, a major U.S. site for academic supercomputing research. 

Michael Dell founded a large technology firm from a UT Austin dorm room in the 1980s. Earlier gifts from the couple to the university include $10 million to build Dell Computer Science Hall in the College of Natural Sciences, $50 million to launch the Dell Medical School and $100 million for UT for Me – Powered by Dell Scholars, a program for students who qualify for federal Pell Grants. 

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