BREAKING: Cal Poly Launches $3 Million “AI Factory,” Bringing Supercomputing Power to the Central Coast
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — In a landmark move set to transform education, research, and industry across the Central Coast, Cal Poly has announced the development of a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Factory — a high-performance, on-campus supercomputing hub that will allow students, faculty, and regional partners to build and train advanced AI models at a scale rarely seen at public universities.
Powered by a state-of-the-art NVIDIA DGX B200 BasePOD, the system is funded through a $3 million investment from The Noyce School of Applied Computing and is expected to be fully operational by January 2026. Once online, Cal Poly will join an elite group of institutions nationwide with the ability to design, train, and deploy large-scale AI models using the same infrastructure found in enterprise-level NVIDIA data centers.
The AI Factory will be built in collaboration with Mark III Systems and will house four NVIDIA DGX B200 systems, backed by high-performance storage, networking architecture, and the full NVIDIA AI software stack. Crucially, because all computing is done on premises, Cal Poly retains full ownership of all data, models, and applications — offering a level of control and privacy not possible with commercial cloud services.
The university unveiled the initiative during its inaugural AI Convening, co-hosted by the Provost’s Office and the Noyce School of Applied Computing. The event brought together campus leaders, industry partners, and regional organizations to examine the role of ethical, responsible and human-centered AI in higher education.
“The AI Factory exemplifies Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing philosophy,” said Al Liddicoat, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
“We’re giving students not just the ability to use AI, but to shape it.”
A Technological Leap Forward
According to the Noyce School, the new system will deliver up to 3× faster training performance and up to 15× faster inference than previous-generation GPU clusters — accelerating projects that once required months of processing time into tasks that can now be completed in days.
The AI Factory will support a wide range of applied research, including:
Agricultural analytics and precision farming
Energy generation and grid optimization
Transportation and autonomous systems
Environmental monitoring and climate research
Advanced image and video processing
Next-generation large language model (LLM) development
The system also dramatically lowers the cost barrier. Comparable cloud-based GPU resources can cost individual researchers or students thousands of dollars per semester. By hosting the system in-house, Cal Poly ensures that all students — not just those in computer science — gain access to cutting-edge computing.
“This system lets us train our own large language models from the ground up,” said Chris Lupo, founding director of the Noyce School of Applied Computing.
“Noyce exists to drive innovation like this.”
“We’re not just using AI tools — we’re building them,” added Robert Crockett, interim dean of the College of Engineering.
“This puts Cal Poly at the forefront of applied AI research among public universities.”
A Regional Resource for the Central Coast
Designed with scalability and long-term sustainability in mind, the AI Factory will include integrated energy-use monitoring connected to Cal Poly’s solar farm. The university also plans to make computing power available through faculty partnerships to organizations and businesses across the Central Coast in industries such as:
Aerospace and unmanned systems
Biotechnology and medical device R&D
AgTech and food safety
Manufacturing and robotics
Environmental science and conservation
This opens the door for regional companies, small startups, and government agencies to pursue complex AI-driven solutions without needing to invest in their own large-scale infrastructure.
What This Means for Central Coast Growth
The launch of the AI Factory is more than a university upgrade — it could be a turning point for the Central Coast economy. Here’s how:
A New Technology Hub Emerges
Historically, the Central Coast has struggled to retain tech talent, with many graduates leaving for Silicon Valley, San Diego, or Los Angeles. By offering world-class AI research hardware and partnerships, Cal Poly positions San Luis Obispo as a potential regional AI innovation corridor.
This may attract:
New tech companies
Venture capital interest
Industry-academic research partnerships
Startups founded by Cal Poly students and alumni
Boost for Agriculture, the Region’s Economic Backbone
The Central Coast’s dominant industry — agriculture — is undergoing rapid technological transformation. The AI Factory enables:
On-site development of precision farming tools
Crop and soil analytics
Predictive modeling for yields, water use, and climate changes
Automated pest detection via computer vision
Robotics for harvest assistance
This increases competitiveness for local farms and ag-tech companies.
Workforce Development for High-Paying Jobs
Cal Poly will be able to train thousands of students annually on the same hardware used in industry-leading AI labs. This produces a workforce ready to fill roles in:
Machine learning engineering
Data science
AI-assisted biosciences
Autonomous systems
Robotic process automation
Advanced manufacturing
Companies are far more likely to stay or relocate where talent pipelines already exist.
Acceleration of Aerospace and Defense Innovation
The Central Coast is home to:
Vandenberg Space Force Base
A growing aerospace startup ecosystem
Drone and unmanned systems companies
High-speed AI computation is essential for simulation, navigation algorithms, satellite imaging, and orbital analysis — making Cal Poly an ideal research partner.
More Opportunities for Small Businesses and Startups
Because cloud GPU computing is prohibitively expensive for most small companies, access to Cal Poly’s AI Factory allows local entrepreneurs to innovate without burning through capital. This opens opportunities for:
Low-budget R&D
Incubator/accelerator programs
Pilot projects using on-campus computing
Joint grant applications with Cal Poly faculty
It lowers the barrier to entering the tech economy.
Potential Growth in Housing, Infrastructure, and Tax Base
As AI-related companies grow around San Luis Obispo and the greater Central Coast, the region may experience:
More high-paying jobs
Increased demand for professional housing
Expanded tax revenues
Growth in commercial spaces supporting tech (coworking, labs, R&D facilities)
This could shift the regional economy toward a hybrid model: agriculture + aerospace + AI + sustainable tech.
Statewide and National Recognition
The AI Factory aligns with California’s broader effort to build an AI-enabled workforce across public universities. Cal Poly’s investment positions it as a key node in a statewide AI education network — and potentially a national leader in applied AI.
This kind of visibility attracts:
Federal research funding
NSF and DoD grants
Private-sector partnerships
Corporate donors
It moves Cal Poly into the national conversation around AI innovation.
Cal Poly’s $3M AI Factory is more than an academic tool — it is an economic catalyst that could redefine the future of the Central Coast. By democratizing access to large-scale AI computing, the university is setting the stage for a new generation of innovation in agriculture, aerospace, biotech, sustainability, and regional entrepreneurship. The Central Coast may soon shift from a picturesque coastal region to a must-watch emerging AI hub.
