Nike's Phil Knight Commits $1 Billion to University of Oregon

Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, have committed $1 billion to the University of Oregon to establish an engineering college — the largest known donation to a public flagship university.

The University of Oregon, Knight's alma mater, announced the gift Wednesday. The New York Times reported that the pledge was unexpected, emerging from an unscheduled call between the couple and the university.

Knight, 88, graduated from Oregon in 1959. The new engineering school will bear the Knights' name, like other facilities on the Eugene campus. The commitment brings the couple's total giving to the Knight Campus to more than $2 billion, on top of two earlier $500 million gifts — one in 2016 and one in 2021 — that expanded the university's scientific research complex.

The money changes what Oregon can teach. The university currently offers only engineering minors and graduate programs. The new gift funds a full undergraduate engineering program, a build-out that officials told the NYT will take about a decade. Bob Guldberg, a UO vice president and bioengineering professor, told the paper the program could help ease Oregon's shortage of engineers.

"This extraordinary gift is an endorsement of what higher education delivers," University of Oregon President Karl Scholz told Fortune. "It gives us the ability to scale innovation, accelerate impact, and meet the demand for skilled engineering required by the industries of tomorrow, all without placing that financial burden on state taxpayers."

The Knights' ties to Oregon run deep. They previously gave $100 million to build the university's basketball arena in honor of their late son, Matthew Knight. Oregon athletes get access to new and exclusive Nike gear and unique name, image, and likeness monetization support — a closeness that has earned the school the nickname "University of Nike" and even a book by that title.

The pledge caps a remarkable philanthropic run. Last week, the Knights committed $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Heart Institute in Portland. Last year, they gave $2 billion to OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute. Knight is worth nearly $23 billion, according to Bloomberg.

A gift timed to a federal retreat

The donation lands as federal support for universities hangs in doubt. In early 2025, the Trump administration laid off thousands of staff at federal science agencies, slowed grant payments to colleges, and tried to cut funding for the overhead costs of research. It also pulled back DEI grants.

The White House's fiscal 2026 budget request sought a nearly 36% cut to non-defense-related science research and development funding, including a reduction of nearly 57% at the National Science Foundation and more than 40% at the NIH. Congress has largely rejected those proposals and kept science funding mostly consistent.

The administration has not backed off. Its fiscal 2027 proposal again calls for cuts to scientific research and education programs, and officials have said they want more research funding to flow directly to individual students and researchers rather than academic institutions.

"The president's proposed cuts to NASA and the research agencies of the Department of Energy would hobble the broader American scientific enterprise at a crucial time when dominance in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing is essential to keeping Americans safe and prosperous," the Association of American Universities, which lobbies for major research universities, said in a statement.

That is the gap the Knights are stepping into. Their pledge follows a broader pattern of billionaire philanthropists filling space vacated by Washington — MacKenzie Scott has donated more than $1 billion collectively to historically Black colleges and universities.

"To make an audacious dream a reality requires more than a vivid imagination. It also requires the sort of opportunity that our great American universities, both public and private, have historically provided," Knight said in a statement. "This is no time to abandon them."

"Penny and I are grateful for the chance to invest in our most promising young people's future in this important way," he added.

With more than $4 billion committed to Oregon institutions and Portland health systems in just over a year, the Knights have effectively become a private substitute for shrinking public research funding — a model that only a handful of billionaires can replicate as federal budget fights continue.