What does the SETI Institute do?

It researches the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe, including the search for radio technosignatures, and runs education and outreach programs.

What is the Allen Telescope Array?

A radio telescope of 42 dishes in Hat Creek, California, which the SETI Institute describes as the first radio telescope designed from the ground up for SETI searches.

SETI Institute news

Non-profit research organization1 story

The SETI Institute is a non-profit research organization in Silicon Valley, near NASA Ames Research Center, that studies the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe.

Dish antennas of the Allen Telescope Array under a starry night sky at Hat Creek Radio Observatory. — NVIDIA and SETI Institute run AI agents on the Allen Telescope Array at 2.4 Tbps

AI Research30 Oct 2026, 21:20 UTC

Breakthrough Listen and the SETI Institute now let AI agents steer the Allen Telescope Array and process up to 2.4 Tbps of data on NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA says.

Summary

NVIDIA said on 30 October 2026 that Breakthrough Listen and the SETI Institute have brought agentic AI into the daily search for extraterrestrial intelligence. At the Allen Telescope Array in northern California, agents can steer the antennas, calibrate the instrument, fix data errors and run AI models on the live stream from one natural language request. The system handles 2.4 terabits per second on RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs and made a first real-time AI detection of a pulsar.

About SETI Institute

The SETI Institute is a non-profit research organization in Silicon Valley, near NASA Ames Research Center, that studies the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe. It operates the Allen Telescope Array for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and, in October 2026, began running agentic AI on that telescope with NVIDIA.

Reviewed 30 Oct 2026

Facts at a glance

Type: Non-profit research organization source
Location: Silicon Valley, close to NASA Ames Research Center source
Scientists: Approximately 100 source
Main SETI instrument: Allen Telescope Array, 42 antennas of 6 m each at Hat Creek Radio Observatory, northern California, about 1 to 14 GHz source
AI on the telescope: Agentic AI with NVIDIA Holoscan, CyberEther and the Nexus orchestrator, processing up to 2.4 terabits per second (October 2026) source

Questions people ask

What does the SETI Institute do?: It researches the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe, including the search for radio technosignatures, and runs education and outreach programs.
What is the Allen Telescope Array?: A radio telescope of 42 dishes in Hat Creek, California, which the SETI Institute describes as the first radio telescope designed from the ground up for SETI searches.

SETI Institute news

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NVIDIA and SETI Institute run AI agents on the Allen Telescope Array at 2.4 Tbps