The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oracle, has announced a new collaboration to build the DOE’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer. The initiative aims to advance scientific discovery by providing DOE researchers with immediate access to advanced AI computing resources and constructing two next-generation AI supercomputing systems at Argonne National Laboratory.
The new Solstice system will include 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, making it the largest AI supercomputer within the DOE laboratory network. A second system, named Equinox, will feature 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Construction on the Equinox system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility is set to begin immediately, with delivery expected in 2026. These systems will be integrated with DOE’s network of scientific instruments and data assets to address national challenges in energy, security, and scientific research.
Oracle will also provide immediate access to AI computing resources for DOE researchers using a combination of NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell architectures. This access is intended to support scientists from Argonne and across the United States as they pursue advancements in science and energy applications.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright stated: “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. The two Argonne systems and the collaboration between the Department of Energy, NVIDIA, and Oracle represent a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships. These systems will be a powerhouse for scientific and technological innovation. Thanks to President Trump, we’re bringing new computing capacity online faster than ever before and turning shared innovation into national strength.”
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, commented: “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.”
Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle said: “At Oracle, we are proud to partner with the Department of Energy to deliver sovereign, high-performance AI capabilities. Our collaboration at Argonne, tapping into the power of OCI, will provide a critical resource to address the nation’s most complex challenges and accelerate the next wave of scientific breakthroughs.”
Paul Kearns, director at Argonne National Laboratory added: “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. 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 partnership builds on DOE’s history of public-private collaborations that have contributed significantly to American leadership in supercomputing over several decades. By sharing investments between government agencies and industry partners like NVIDIA and Oracle—who bring expertise in hardware design as well as cloud-based solutions—the department aims for quicker deployment timelines for advanced computational resources.
These efforts are aligned with executive orders aimed at accelerating federal permitting for data center infrastructure while removing barriers related to American leadership in artificial intelligence.
Once operational, both Equinox and Solstice are expected not only to help develop new models using tools like NVIDIA Megatron-Core but also scale them via software such as TensorRT inference stacks—enabling agentic AI workflows crucial for open science initiatives.
This three-phase partnership—from immediate access provided by Oracle’s cloud services through full deployment at Argonne—intends ultimately to shorten research cycles from concept through discovery by leveraging combined expertise from both public sector labs and private technology companies.
