Earlier on April 30th, Governor Kathy Hochul gathered industry leaders and advocates to celebrate a historic agreement with the Legislature to establish Empire AI, a first-of-its-kind consortium to secure New York’s place at the forefront of artificial intelligence research, as part of the FY 2025 Enacted Budget. The consortium will leverage a $275 million state investment to create and launch a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center on the University at Buffalo’s campus. The center will be used by leading New York institutions to promote responsible research and development, create jobs and advance AI for the public good.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Hello, everyone. What a great gathering. Thank you, Julie. First of all, the venue is extraordinary. I was here for the groundbreaking, and signing steel, whatever that tradition's called, and the topping ceremony, then coming back for the ribbon cutting. Cornell Tech has really gained the preeminence that we knew it would have when they first set forth this idea of building here on the legendary Roosevelt Island.

So, I'm really proud to be back and I want to thank Dean Morissett for hosting us here today. Thank you very much — and everyone from this great institution. Julie Samuels — so many smart things come out of this woman's mouth. She has great ideas and we do listen in state government. We really pay attention when Julie comes to us with an idea or a way to build a coalition around an idea — which is what exactly had to happen for us to be here today to talk about this extraordinary opportunity.

Also, Tom Secunda, thank you. Thank you for bringing forth something that is going to change our State forever for the good. And this will be part of your legacy, and I want to thank you for everything you've done. We at least had a chance to spend more time together with other leaders at the Governor's residence to really think about, you know, what is this going to look like? You know, how has this never been done before concept going to be implemented? And I want to thank you for just being the visionary that our time needed right now. So, thank you.

And all the Empire AI founding members — you know — I know we’re talking about the future here today, but let's go back 20 years. The tech culture in New York City — what was it like? You're right. It didn't exist.

It was a couple of people from Google sitting in a Starbucks, thinking of some possibilities, and that was it literally 20 years ago. Not in the scheme of a great city like New York — not a long period of time. And, you know, we always had that spirit of innovation and ingenuity and boldness.

But we are known for finance. Wall Street — we are known for marketing, we're known for fashion, we're known for theater. And I don't think anyone would ever put the words “New York City” as a global tech capital together in the same sentence. But look where we are here today: to build on the work of others, and to take us to a place that will be defining us in ways we never could have imagined.

Think of Silicon Valley before it was discovered as a place where all these young people would go, get educated there, stay, come up with brilliant ideas, commercialize, and start businesses. All of sudden, suburban office parks are cool again. Everybody wanted to work out there, have free parking, and the barista waiting on you, and I’ve been to all of them.

You know, there's slides, there's putt-putt, there's everything. It was a fun world. I traveled out there many times when I was in Congress to, you know, see what this whole world was like, right? Josh knows what I'm talking about. It's built on fun. But today they say things differently about us. They say the West Coast is where your friends are, but your customers are here in New York. And that's what we're going to capitalize on. That's what this is all about.

So, I want to say this is an ecosystem that is vibrant today. A lot of people took a risk. We made it happen. But we decided to take it to the next level. You know, in New York, you can never rest on your laurels. That's not in our DNA as New Yorkers. Never, never, never.

We always push forward, whether it's this ingenious idea by someone sitting in Debtor Prison — look it up, the Erie Canal 200 years ago — a lot of time on his hand, how we can bring a little village known as New York City and be able to take products to market all the way to the Great Lakes and open up the Midwest.

That was 200 years ago. We always dream big. We have our Erie Canal moment right now. This is how significant this Empire AI initiative is. And that is not an exaggeration. People look back at this time and say, “That was the moment when what happened in Silicon Valley was significant, but we took it to a level no one could have imagined.” So, I've said, whoever dominates this next era of AI will dominate history, and indeed the future. So, we're used to it. That's what we do here.

I just have some remarks. I'm just going to share a couple more of them, but we're building on successes not just here in New York City, but all over the state. You know, where was I this past week? Syracuse. Why Syracuse? Say the word: CHIPS. I was going to say Micron, but CHIPS works too. President Biden — he and Majority Leader Schumer, CHIPS and Science Act passed by the federal government, but that meant that they'd be bringing semiconductor manufacturing back here — or developing it here — but why New York? Why'd they come to New York instead of Texas and other places that thought they had the first dibs on these opportunities?

They came to New York because New York met the moment. And I was able to get $10 billion through the legislature in the final days, two years ago, and said, “We want to be competitive. We have to offer incentives if we're going to be the place that they come.” And that's how we landed the largest private sector investment in history — $100 billion, 50,000 jobs in Upstate New York. That ripple effect will be everywhere, including on this campus. That's what we're doing. We're dreaming big. We're thinking big, acting big.

So, we'll continue to focus on these opportunities, but I'm here to listen to you. This has never been done before. First in the nation. Other states are looking — other states, I'm told by my governor friends — are envious that we're able to pull together this consortium with private sector dollars, public sector dollars, and our universities, so every young person from our privates, like Cornell, CUNY, SUNY, diverse campuses, they'll have a shot to seize the future.

I want to see a diverse tech workforce and I believe that's one of the drivers of why people are starting to discover us and saying we need to have more voices, we need to have more women, we need to have people of color, we need to have everybody's voices represented because they were not getting that out in Silicon Valley for a long time. So, we're changing the world, starting here today. You tell me how it's going to happen.