UC Berkeley’s Bakar Gateway to Accelerate AI-Driven Discovery

The University of California, Berkeley held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in May of 2026 to celebrate the approaching completion of the Barbara and Gerson Bakar Gateway building. The $557 million facility will house the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) and bring together approximately 1,325 faculty, students, and staff to elevate education and accelerate AI-driven discovery. Designed by Weiss/Manfredi and Gensler, the 367,270-sf development features five floors of research laboratories, classrooms, seminar and conference rooms, auditoriums, and offices. 

The light-filled, transparent structure provides built-in flexibility to adapt to the future needs of rapidly evolving fields of inquiry. Units in the Gateway will include the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, the Department of Statistics, Data Science Undergraduate Studies, and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. As the new home for CDSS Student Services, the facility will also accommodate the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet, the Center for Computational Biology, and the UCSF & UC Berkeley Computational Precision Health program. 

Emphasizing cross-disciplinary collaboration, department neighborhoods integrate strategically interconnected work and meeting environments as well as social kitchens to eliminate academic silos and promote exploration and engagement. The lower floors are dedicated to undergraduate activities and offer a vibrant convening area and a garden-level café, while the upper stories support graduate operations and a rooftop event space.

Targeting LEED Platinum certification, the all-electric hub is being built by Turner Construction. Ground was broken in September of 2022 and full occupancy is slated for August of 2026.