Department of Energy plans largest AI supercomputer

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Argonne National Laboratory, NVidia and Oracle announced a public-private partnership to deliver the DOE’s largest AI supercomputer and accelerate scientific discovery. Argonne is also deploying three new AI computing systems through an existing partnership with NVidia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and World Wide Technology (WWT).

The DOE, Argonne, NVIDIA, and Oracle partnership will immediately deliver AI computing resources to DOE researchers while simultaneously building two next-generation AI supercomputing systems at Argonne.

The Solstice system, which will feature 100,000 NVidia Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs), will be the largest AI supercomputer in the DOE’s lab complex. Another system, called Equinox, will feature 10,000 NVidia Blackwell GPUs. Construction at Argonne will immediately begin for the Equinox system. It is expected to be delivered in 2026. These AI systems will be connected with DOE’s network of scientific instruments and data assets to address some of the nation’s challenges in energy, security and discovery science.

As part of the partnership, Oracle will also immediately provide DOE with access to AI computing resources that use a combination of Nvidia Hopper and Blackwell architectures. Scientists from Argonne and across the country will have access to AI capabilities.

“Winning the AI race requires new and creative partnerships that will bring together the brightest minds and industries American technology and science has to offer,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “The two Argonne systems and the collaboration between the Department of Energy, NVidia and Oracle represent a new common-sense approach to computing partnerships. These systems will be a powerhouse for scientific and technological innovation.”  

NVidia CEO Jensen Huang proclaimed AI is the most powerful technology of our time, and science is its greatest frontier. “Together with the Department of Energy and Oracle, we’re building an AI factory that will serve as America’s engine for discovery, giving researchers access to the most advanced AI infrastructure to drive progress across fields ranging from healthcare research to materials,” he said.

DOE has a long history of public-private partnerships that have provided American leadership in supercomputing for decades.

“The Equinox and Solstice systems are designed to accelerate a broad set of scientific AI workflows, and we are collaborating with Oracle and NVidia to prepare thousands of researchers to effectively leverage the systems’ groundbreaking capabilities,” said Paul Kearns, Argonne National Laboratory director. “This system will seamlessly connect to forefront DOE experimental facilities such as our Advanced Photon Source, allowing scientists to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges through scientific discovery.”

The Equinox and Solstice systems will enable scientists and researchers to develop and train new frontier models and reasoning models for open science using NVidia Megatron-Core and scale them using the NVidia TensorRT inference software stack. These models will form the backbone of agentic AI workflows for scientific discovery.

Argonne’s Minerva, Janus, and Tara systems—built with support from NVidia, HPE and WWT—are designed to accelerate AI inference and workforce development.

“Modern science isn’t just about having powerful computers anymore; it’s also about having powerful AI capabilities,” said Rick Stevens, Argonne’s associate laboratory director for computing, environment and life sciences. “Inference allows us to streamline how we test hypotheses, design experiments and gain insights from large, complex datasets.”

Minerva, built in collaboration with WWT and NVidia, is designed to accelerate AI inference—the process of using a trained AI model to make predictions, identify patterns or generate insights from new data. Janus, built in collaboration with HPE and NVidia, will support the development of the next-generation workforce in AI and high-performance computing (HPC).

Argonne is also partnering with NVidia to acquire Tara, an AI inference system that is designed to deliver an AI-HPC environment that converts exascale computation and AI advances into scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation.

“Nvidia’s accelerated computing platform is the engine of modern supercomputers, built to power the world’s most demanding AI and scientific workloads,” said Dion Harris, senior director of HPC, cloud and AI infrastructure at NVidia. “Argonne’s new NVidia systems will empower U.S. researchers to push the frontiers of discovery.”

The five AI computing systems headed to Argonne are designed to decrease the time it takes researchers to move from idea to discovery.