“The Hinton Chair will enable us to attract an exceptional leader who can help keep U of T at the forefront of AI innovation.”

In December 2025, the University of Toronto announced the creation of the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence, supported by $10 million in funding from Google. The new chair honours the remarkable legacy of Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, whose many years of groundbreaking research at U of T – where he is now a University Professor Emeritus – sparked the AI revolution that is transforming the world.

“Geoff Hinton laid the foundations for a lot of modern AI,” says Eyal de Lara, Chair of the Department of Computer Science. “And he inspired a group of researchers whose foundational work has made this university a global AI stronghold. The Hinton Chair will enable us to attract an exceptional leader who can help keep U of T at the forefront of AI innovation.”

Google’s support is being matched by the university, making this one of the most generously funded chairs in advanced research. It will enable an innovative research leader to explore new directions while attracting like-minded colleagues. “Great researchers want to work with other great researchers,” says de Lara. “The ecosystem they build together also attracts top students who want to learn from and conduct research under recognized innovators in AI.”

A bridge to the future

U of T’s leadership in AI has already had a significant economic impact. “Toronto is one of the world’s most active technology hubs,” de Lara says. “Major tech companies have set up development facilities here, attracted by our strength in AI. As our faculty members help to define the field, they’re training students who go on to join these companies. Work initially developed in our labs is being applied to create products and services. There are also many AI-focused startups coming out of this university. So it’s really a multiplicative effect. U of T’s leadership as a nexus for AI stimulates the regional and national economies, creating jobs, attracting investment and helping ensure Canadians benefit from innovation that originated here.”

Even companies with their own research groups value the fresh insights that U of T is uniquely equipped to provide. “What makes a research- focused university like ours such a powerful institution is that we encourage faculty to be independent thinkers who set their own agendas,” says de Lara. “They’re free to explore ideas, even if it means taking risks or going against the general consensus. And when the privilege of academic freedom leads to important discoveries that wouldn’t otherwise have happened, society benefits.”

Those discoveries don’t emerge overnight. The transformative change being driven by AI is grounded in decades of fundamental research. For the Department of Computer Science, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2025, sustaining progress means constantly investing in new avenues of inquiry. The Hinton Chair, as an endowed position, will continue to inspire breakthrough research and attract talented faculty and students for years to come.

The chair’s role as a bridge between past and future is summed up by the man it honours: “I am grateful for having been able to pursue my research at the University of Toronto, which afforded me the time and resources to develop the ideas that would eventually grow into the success of neural nets,” says Geoff Hinton. “And I am encouraged that the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence will support the next generation of AI research in the same vein, allowing ideas of great promise to germinate for the benefit of all humanity.”

Google, in generously funding the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence, joins thousands of donors whose endowed support enabled U of T to invest $1.1 billion in chairs and professorships during the university fiscal year ending April 30, 2025. This represents about 29% of the total $3.9 billion in endowment funds under UTAM’s management during that period.*