David Roux, a Maine native who made his fortune as an entrepreneur and investor in Silicon Valley, announced this morning that he and his wife Barbara were investing $100 million in a project with Northeastern University to create a high-tech graduate education and research institute in Portland.

The school, which will be called the Roux Institute at Northeastern University, will provide advanced degrees in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which Roux called the “twin foundation pillars of the most dynamic sectors of our economy today.” The announcement was made this morning at a press conference at Ocean Gateway in Portland.

“Our plan is to focus exclusively on practical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning on digital engineering and life sciences,” Roux said during the press event. “It’s a narrow but incredibly powerful target we’re aiming at, which happens to represent the most important growth engine in the economy.”

Roux grew up in Lewiston before leaving Maine to attend Harvard University, followed by a graduate degree at Cambridge. An entrepreneur, he founded several software companies, selling the first to Lotus and the second to Symantec. He then worked as executive vice president of Oracle under Larry Ellison before leaving in 1999 to co-found Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm targeting investments in mature technology companies. Today, the firm has more than $43 billion in assets under management.

Roux said the school’s mission is to educate the next generation of talent with the skills necessary to participate fully in the innovation economy and to attract and help grow a group of dynamic companies in Maine. Maine is underperforming against its potential and not fully participating in the burgeoning tech economy, Roux said.

“It would be like living on this beautiful seacoast and not doing any boating, not swimming, not sailing, not fishing—lovely vista, but you’re not really actively participating and benefitting from where you are,” Roux said.

This is not a problem Portland and Maine face alone. The economic activity tied to this technological sea change is highly concentrated in a few spots, which Roux said is an unhealthy situation.

“What’s going on in the United States is that ability and ambition are very broadly distributed, across our state and across the country, but opportunity is not. Opportunity today is very highly concentrated in only a few large urban areas,” Roux said. “Think of Boston. Think of Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Austin. What do these super cities have in common? Every single one of them has at least one great research university, they have a cluster of highly innovative corporations, and they have a bustling, high-wage job market. Why can’t we do that?”

While not trying to compare Maine with Silicon Valley, he pointed out that 50 years ago, that area of California was known for its oranges. That evolution and reinvention is possible in other places, he said.

“That can happen for us, as well, but we’re going to need to do something different for that to be the case,” he said, making the point that there’s no reason Portland shouldn’t be to Boston what San Jose is to San Francisco.

After deciding to make the sizable investment necessary to drive the changes he wants to see, Roux said he and his wife interviewed more than a dozen research universities to find the right one for this project. At the end, Boston-based Northeastern was a “compelling” choice, he said. The school, he said, is driven by a highly entrepreneurial leadership team, including President Joseph Aoun; has demonstrated success running successful satellite campuses in places like Seattle, Silicon Valley, Toronto and London; and experience collaborating with corporate partners to develop curriculum, launch internship programs, and perform joint research. The school’s leadership team also shares a commitment to provide affordable eduction, Roux said.

Roux called the school “an elite institution that’s not elitist.”

Northeastern’s president, Joseph Aoun, thanked Roux for their vision and “transformational” investment in Maine, a place he called “poised for the future.”

“Their vision is in perfect alignment with Northeastern’s distinctive approach to education and research,” he said. “The impact of the Roux Institute will reverberate across the region for generations to come. It will serve as a national model for expanding growth and innovation, and reducing inequality.”

The school will begin enrolling students this summer, likely mostly employees from the corporate partners at the outset. The school will begin in temporary space, but is dedicated to building a “distinctive, urban campus” in Portland, Roux said. He said that would be “in about three years.” Provost James Bean told the Bangor Daily News that he expects up to 4,000 students in eight years and to employ about 300 people within five years.

The Roux Institute’s curriculum will be developed in close collaboration with corporate partners, though Northeastern shared in a news release that the school’s initial program portfolio will cover two broad disciplines: digital technology and advanced life sciences. In the former, curricula will include applied analytics, computer science, data science, data visualization, and machine learning; in advanced life sciences, subjects will cover bioinformatics, biotechnology, genomics, health data analytics, and precision medicine.

Ten corporate partners have already signed onto the project as cosponsors: Bangor Savings Bank, IDEXX, The Jackson Laboratory, L.L.Bean, MaineHealth, PTC, Thornton Tomasetti, Tilson Technology, Unum, and WEX.