Rockefeller Foundation Grants $7,500 to Dartmouth AI Workshop

The Rockefeller Foundation’s $7,500 grant in 1956 helped launch what is widely regarded as the first formal investment in artificial intelligence. The funding enabled a group of four leading mathematicians to convene the Dartmouth Workshop, a pioneering conference that brought together researchers from mathematics, computer science, and psychology to explore the possibility of creating machines that could simulate human intelligence.

At the workshop, the participants coined the term “artificial intelligence” and outlined a research agenda that would shape the field for decades. The event marked the first organized effort to study machine intelligence as a distinct scientific discipline, and the grant is now seen as a foundational moment in the history of AI. By providing the initial financial support, the Rockefeller Foundation played a key role in transforming theoretical speculation into a structured research program that would eventually lead to the modern AI boom.