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 agreement aims to accelerate scientific research by providing advanced AI computing resources to DOE researchers and constructing two next-generation AI supercomputing systems at Argonne National Laboratory.
The Solstice system will be equipped with 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, making it the largest AI supercomputer within the DOE’s laboratory network. Another system, Equinox, will have 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Construction for Equinox at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility is set to begin immediately and is expected to be completed in 2026. Both systems will connect with DOE’s network of scientific instruments and data assets to address national challenges in energy, security, and science.
Oracle will also provide immediate access to AI computing resources that utilize both NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell architectures. This arrangement allows scientists from Argonne and across the United States to use new AI capabilities for 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 said: “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.”
The DOE has a history of public-private partnerships supporting American leadership in supercomputing. This latest effort introduces a model that allows shared investments between government agencies and industry partners so that supercomputers can become operational more quickly.
Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle commented: “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.”
These new systems are intended for developing advanced models using tools like NVIDIA Megatron-Core alongside scaling software such as TensorRT inference stack. They aim to support open science efforts by enabling agentic AI workflows for discovery.
By combining immediate access through Oracle-provided resources with future deployment at Argonne National Laboratory facilities—Solstice in particular—the partnership seeks rapid advancement from research ideas toward discoveries while maintaining U.S. leadership in global artificial intelligence development.
