Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks at the launch of the Nucleus Institute on Aug. 27, 2025 (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch)
State officials and higher education leaders have launched the Nucleus Institute, an organization they hope to see become a crucial tool for Utah innovators to compete at a global level, finding solutions for emerging energy needs and developing technologies like artificial intelligence.
The organization stems from a law passed in the 2025 legislative session that restructured the Utah Innovation Lab and created the institute as “an independent, nonprofit, quasi-public corporation.” The goal is to connect higher education, industry and government to make ideas become reality.
With the institute, researchers and entrepreneurs can search for solutions to early-stage funding challenges, moving forward from concept to market, or finding spaces to collaborate.
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Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said during the launch on Wednesday the institute will help make Utahns’ lives easier by finding solutions to keep energy prices low, decarbonizing the atmosphere and other challenges the country faces.
“We are never going to regulate our way out of the most difficult problems that we’re facing as a country,” Cox said. “We can only innovate, and the state does play a role in that, and so does higher ed, but especially the private sector.”
The institute is expected to collaborate with different innovation campuses across the state, including those in authorities like the Point of the Mountain and the Inland Port, but also other innovation labs in public universities.
And with the help of those partnerships, Cox said, this and future generations of Utahns will be able to build their innovation skills in a thriving environment.
“It is all about passing that knowledge of innovation, those skills that are so necessary to compete on a global scale, and passing them on to the next generation,” Cox said. “It’s about investing in companies that are going to solve those wicked problems that we’re facing right now as a country. We know that the solutions are out there. We just need to discover them.”
In a way, the new organization is a response to the unprecedented speed of change in different technologies, said Jefferson Moss, director of the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, and now, also leader of the Nucleus Institute.
“We led the nation on AI. We led the nation on data privacy. We’re leading the nation on energy. We can do that because we have people in the government that actually get along and want to get stuff done,” Moss said. “And then you take that and combine it with both the great things we’re doing in education.”
President of the University of Utah, Taylor Randall said he was excited to be part of the initiative since the state’s flagship university dedicates almost $800 million a year in research, including important medical advancements like the first artificial heart implant for a human.
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“But that research is no good if it stays in the lab,” Randall said. Nucleus, he added, is a way to step on the gas to incorporate those types of discoveries into people’s lives.
The Legislature allocated $555,400 from the Income Tax Fund for compensation and benefits for the institute board’s executive director, for the compensation of the chair of the innovation fund, and an annual contracted audit during years 2026 and 2027, according to the bill’s fiscal note.
Senate Majority Leader, Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, who sponsored the legislation in the Senate, said that while the institute is expected to collaborate with for-profit industries, it’s still a nonprofit structure.
“The goal is to boost the economy in Utah, to boost the workforce in Utah, to boost innovation and commercialization of that innovation here,” Cullimore said. “So it’s not really a business idea, and it’s government-esque, but playing in that more innovation and entrepreneurial space to kind of help facilitate all these things.”
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