The Empire State Development (ESD) Board has approved a $40 million investment from the state of New York to upgrade the supercomputer powering its Empire AI initiative.

Dubbed Empire AI Beta and housed at the University of Buffalo, the supercomputer marks the second phase of the initiative, which has seen a group of ten New York research institutions partner for the development of an AI computing center.

According to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Empire AI Beta is backed by more than $500m in public and private funding. Consisting of an Nvidia DGX GB200 SuperPOD, the system will offer an eight times increase in data storage, an 11x increase in AI training, and a 40x increase in inference, when compared to the current Alpha system.

Built by Lenovo, the original 4.10 petaflops Alpha deployment ranked 283rd on the most recent edition of the Top500 list and 51st on the Green500 list.

“With Empire AI, New York is leading in emerging technology and ensuring the power of AI is harnessed for public good and developed right here in this great state,” Hochul said. “The launch of Beta will supercharge our efforts to advance responsible AI development by some of our brightest minds at research institutions focused on purpose, not profit.”

ESD president, CEO, and commissioner, Hope Knight, added: “As AI research, development, and usage grows, New York tech leaders are exploring new ways to utilize these advancements in ways that will generate solutions to complex issues and support positive growth. The $40 million in funding… represents a significant step forward that will increase the capacity of Empire AI and further enhance the AI research happening throughout our state.”

Empire AI’s founding members are the State University of New York, the City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University, NYU, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Flatiron Institute, with the University of Rochester, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai having more recently joined the project.

Also this month, the state of New York was given the green light to build the first new commercial nuclear plant in the US for 15 years, with Governor Hochul directing the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop and construct an advanced nuclear power plant in upstate New York with a capacity of at least 1GW.

New York currently has 3.4GW of operational nuclear capacity, representing 42 percent of its low-carbon energy production.