diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..66b05eb61d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+<!--
+SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2024 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
+SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-NvidiaProprietary
+
+NVIDIA CORPORATION, its affiliates and licensors retain all intellectual
+property and proprietary rights in and to this material, related
+documentation and any modifications thereto. Any use, reproduction,
+disclosure or distribution of this material and related documentation
+without an express license agreement from NVIDIA CORPORATION or
+its affiliates is strictly prohibited.
+-->
+
+# Legate
+
+The Legate project makes it easier for programmers to leverage the
+power of large clusters of CPUs and GPUs. Using Legate, programs can be
+developed and tested on moderately sized data sets on local machines and
+then immediately scaled up to larger data sets deployed on many nodes in
+the cloud or on a supercomputer, *without any code modifications*.
+
+---
+
+The Legate API is implemented on top of the [Legion](https://legion.stanford.edu/)
+programming model and runtime system, which was originally designed for large
+HPC applications that target supercomputers.
+
+The Legate project is built from two foundational principles:
+
+**Implicit parallelism**
+
+For end users, the programming model must be identical to programming a
+single sequential CPU on their laptop or desktop. Parallelism, data
+distribution, and synchronization must be implicit. The cloud or a
+supercomputer should appear as nothing more than a super-powerful CPU core.
+
+**Composability**
+
+Software must be compositional and not merely interoperable. Libraries
+developed in the Legate ecosystem must be able to exchange partitioned
+and distributed data without requiring "shuffles" or unnecessary blocking
+synchronization. Computations from different libraries should be able to
+use arbitrary data and still be reordered across abstraction boundaries
+to hide communication and synchronization latencies (where the original
+sequential semantics of the program allow). This is essential to achieve
+optimal performance on large-scale machines.
+
+## Documentation
+
+Please check the [Legate Core documentation](https://docs.nvidia.com/legate) for
+installation instructions, API reference, and further resources on using Legate.
+
+## Questions
+
+If you have questions, please contact us at legate(at)nvidia.com.