The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oracle to develop what will become the DOE’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer. This initiative is designed to speed up scientific discovery by providing advanced AI computing resources for DOE researchers.
As part of the collaboration, two new AI supercomputing systems—Solstice and Equinox—will be built at Argonne National Laboratory. The Solstice system will include 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, making it the largest AI supercomputer in the DOE laboratory network. The Equinox system will feature 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Construction on Equinox at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility is set to begin immediately, with delivery expected in 2026.
These new systems will be integrated with DOE’s network of scientific instruments and data assets to help address challenges in energy, security, and science. Oracle will also provide immediate access to AI computing resources that use both NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell architectures for DOE researchers nationwide.
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.”
Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle added: “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 noted: “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.”
According to information provided by DOE officials in their announcement today (Oct 28 2025), this partnership follows executive orders aimed at speeding up federal permitting for data center infrastructure as well as removing barriers for American leadership in artificial intelligence.
The Equinox and Solstice systems are expected not only to support open science through development using tools like NVIDIA Megatron-Core but also allow scaling through software such as NVIDIA TensorRT inference stack—enabling faster transition from idea generation through research breakthroughs.
This public-private model reflects an ongoing trend within DOE toward shared investments between government agencies like national laboratories—and industry partners—to quickly deploy advanced technologies that maintain U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence research.
