One of Huntsman's most notable causes is the Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah, of which he was the founder and principal benefactor. He and his wife Karen established the Huntsman Cancer Institute in 1993 with a gift of $10 million from the Huntsman family. The Huntsmans gave the institute a further $100 million in 1995, an amount roughly equal to a year's total distribution to researchers from the American Cancer Society. Their goal was to accelerate the work of curing cancer through human genetics. The institute is now one of America's major cancer research centers dedicated to finding a cure for cancer with a state-of-the-art cancer specialty hospital.