Jim Simons needed machine learning for his quantitative hedge funds. He founded this institute for computational everything:

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/flatiron/

He has invested in AI for a long time:

https://www.wealthmanagement.com/high-net-worth/family-offic...

The people here who depict him or whoever runs his funds now as a pure philanthropists are wrong. These tiny investments into academia pay off many times.