Argonne Expands Nation’s AI Infrastructure With Powerful New Supercomputers and Public-Private Partnerships

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA and Oracle announced a landmark 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, HPE, and World Wide Technology (WWT).

New DOE, NVIDIA and Oracle partnership for next-generation AI supercomputing

The DOE, Argonne, NVIDIA, and Oracle partnership will immediately deliver world-class AI computing resources to DOE researchers while simultaneously building two next-generation AI supercomputing systems at Argonne. Today’s announcement is in accordance with President Trump’s Executive Order, Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure.

The Solstice system, which will feature 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell 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 seamlessly connected with DOE’s vast network of scientific instruments and data assets to address some of the nation’s most pressing 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 new AI capabilities to drive technological leadership for science and energy applications.

“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 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.”

“AI is the most powerful technology of our time, and science is its greatest frontier,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “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.”

DOE has a long history of public-private partnerships that have provided American leadership in supercomputing for decades, and thanks to President Trump, the Energy Department is forging ahead with bold new partnerships. This latest collaboration exemplifies DOE’s new model, which enables shared investments and shared computing power between government and industry. As a result, the Energy Department is able to bring supercomputers online faster, ensuring America leads in artificial intelligence and scientific research.

“At Oracle, we are proud to partner with the Department of Energy to deliver sovereign, high-performance AI capabilities,” said Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle. “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.”

“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.

NVIDIA, HPE and WWT AI computing systems to deliver unmatched AI inference

Argonne’s Minerva, Janus, and Tara systems—built with support from NVIDIA, HPE, and WWT—are tailored 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 World Wide Technology 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 will deliver a world-leading, integrated AI-HPC environment that converts exascale computation and AI advances into scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation, strengthening U.S. leadership in AI for science and technology.

“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, reaffirming America’s leadership in AI and high-performance computing, and transforming data into breakthroughs that advance every field of science.”

“Together through our partnership with Argonne, we are strengthening the nation’s leadership in science and engineering by delivering some of the world’s most powerful infrastructure based on cutting-edge computing technologies,” said Trish Damkroger, senior vice president and general manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions at HPE. “We’re looking forward to continuing our strong collaboration with Argonne and NVIDIA to build upon our supercomputing innovation to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, engineering and beyond.”

Echoing that sentiment, Scot Gagnon, vice president of Federal at World Wide Technology, said: “We’re proud to partner with Argonne and DOE to deliver Minerva. This state-of-the-art system will bring a new level of inference to the open science community, providing broad access to advanced AI capabilities that will drive discoveries.”

All five AI computing systems headed to Argonne will dramatically decrease the time it takes researchers to move from idea to discovery. By bringing together the science and computing expertise in the DOE national lab complex with private sector capabilities in frontier AI systems, DOE researchers will gain access to cutting-edge tools to accelerate scientific breakthroughs and technology innovations to maintain America’s global AI leadership.