About the LaCross AI Institute

Our Approach

We don’t know what the future of AI will be.

We do know that siloed thinking won’t provide answers.

Darden prepares responsible leaders for business. The business of artificial intelligence needs this leadership more than ever.

With the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business, Darden strives to ensure that the good of all stakeholders — a signature of the School’s research, teaching and engagement — is factored into how AI’s enormous potential is applied in business contexts.

The Institute also serves as a connector for UVA, uniting other AI initiatives, centers and units. For instance, Darden and UVA School of Data Science's flourishing partnership focuses on the intersection of data science and business. The institute will empower UVA to coordinate and magnify its research, pedagogy, teaching and engagement in AI across UVA schools, institutes and research centers.
 

Our Values

At Darden, we’re on a mission to develop responsible leaders.  

Our unparalleled, transformational learning experiences, delivered by faculty ranked the best in the world for bringing out the best in students, puts purpose in motion and leads to a lifetime of career advancement and impact.
 

About the LaCross Gift

One of the Largest AI Gifts to Any Business School in the World

In October 2023, Dave (MBA '78) and Kathy LaCross announced an historic gift of $101 million to Darden, indicating their aspiration to earmark $50 million to establish a Darden-led AI institute that would collaborate with UVA schools and initiatives working in a similar vein. The LaCross' investment in AI has since expanded to over $62 million to fund professorships in ethical AI in business, including a University Professorship and a practitioner chair in AI that will enable Darden to build on existing faculty strengths by recruiting additional world-leading faculty and professors of practice to advance teaching and research.

The new LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business extends the work of Darden's AI Initiative, which was created in 2022 through an initial gift from the LaCrosses, with support from Darden's Institute for Business in Society and Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, and the Collaboratory for Applied Data Science in Business, launched in partnership with the UVA School of Data Science in 2021.