The Equal-Award Projection, 552 to 1
Alaska is 570,641 square miles of land, about 552 times Rhode Island's 1,034.
The deck
SWIPE, SCROLL OR CLICK A SLIDE TO GO FULLSCREEN · 9 SLIDES
The story
NSF's new AI Infrastructure Hubs program caps both at one award.
Ten awards are anticipated for fifty states. Most get nothing. NSF's own word for the problem is uneven. Alaska's ceiling was set before anyone read a proposal.
The rule counts states. Alaska counts once from Ketchikan to Utqiagvik, and no state has more land. Rhode Island counts once too.
The rule in NSF's own words, the $100 million headline against the solicitation's range, and fifty states drawn at true land area.
Full proposals are due November 4th. An institution can be named on only one proposal. Someone at an Alaska university or nonprofit has 82 days to sort out whose name that is.
Is 82 days enough for Alaska's institutions to line up behind one proposal?
What we verified
28 CLAIMS, EACH RE-FETCHED FROM ITS SOURCE BEFORE THIS DECK SHIPPED
NSF solicitation 26-513 states that only one award per state or multi-state region will be made.
NSF's announcement says it will initially support up to 10 AI Infrastructure Hubs with one award made per state or region.
The solicitation says an institution may appear as a participant in at most one proposal.
The solicitation says that if more than one proposal contains an institution as a participant then only the first one will be reviewed.
The solicitation prohibits inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing.
The full proposal deadline for the first cycle of NSF 26-513 is November 4, 2026.
There are 82 days from the run date of August 14, 2026 to the November 4, 2026 full proposal deadline.
NSF's solicitation says access to AI infrastructure including computing, data and software is highly uneven across the nation.
NSF's August 4th announcement says access to AI infrastructure remains highly uneven across the nation.
NSF's announcement describes the program as a $100 million initiative.
The solicitation gives the anticipated funding amount for NSF 26-513 as $40,000,000 to $100,000,000.
The solicitation anticipates 10 awards in each award cycle.
NSF anticipates typical proposals to the program will request 5 years and between $4,000,000 and $12,000,000 total budget.
The program's full official title is U.S. National Science Foundation State and Regional Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Hubs, Expanding Access to Compute for Scientific Discovery.
The solicitation is numbered NSF 26-513 and was posted on July 31, 2026.
NSF announced the State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs program on August 4, 2026.
Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director, is the NSF official quoted in the announcement.
Brian Stone said the program supports a national mission to advance AI for science by expanding access to critical AI resources.
Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is also quoted in the NSF announcement.
The solicitation names two categories of eligible proposers, institutions of higher education and non-profit non-academic organizations.
The solicitation limits an individual to participating in at most one proposal as PI, co-PI or Senior or Key Personnel for each deadline.
The solicitation lists subsequent full proposal deadlines of November 3, 2027 and the first Wednesday in November annually thereafter.
The U.S. Census Bureau puts Alaska's land area at 570,641 square miles, the largest of any state.
Alaska's land area is about 552 times Rhode Island's, and NSF 26-513 caps each of them at one award.
A University of Alaska Fairbanks energy research project received a $725,000 award from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The smallest budget NSF says it anticipates for a hub proposal is about 5.5 times the whole AURORA-AI award to UAF.
The UAF project is called AURORA-AI, short for Alaska Utility Resilience and Optimization using Real-time AI.
Richard Wies, a professor at UAF, is principal investigator for the AURORA-AI project.
Beats
This article is on Defense and federal AI in Alaska · Alaska AI research and science. Each beat page keeps every decision and every article on that subject in one place.