US National Labs Unveil Next-Gen AI Supercomputers

National Labs Accelerate AI Integration with Next-Generation Supercomputers

The United States is dramatically accelerating its integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with high-performance computing (HPC), as major national laboratories unveil a wave of next-generation supercomputers designed to revolutionize scientific discovery, national security, and industrial innovation. Spearheaded by the Department of Energy (DOE) and its network of national labs—including Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Los Alamos—these systems represent a strategic push to maintain American leadership in AI-driven science and secure sovereign AI infrastructure.

Discovery and Lux: AMD and HPE Power Oak Ridge’s AI Leap

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), two landmark systems are set to redefine the landscape: Discovery and Lux. Both are the result of a public-private partnership involving ORNL, AMD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Lux, scheduled for deployment in early 2026, will be the first dedicated U.S. “AI factory” for science. It will leverage AMD Instinct™ MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC™ CPUs, and AMD Pensando™ networking, housed in HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 platforms. Lux is designed to accelerate AI deployment for critical national priorities, including fusion and fission energy, materials science, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and grid resilience.
Discovery, set for delivery in 2028, will surpass ORNL’s current flagship, Frontier, in every performance metric. Discovery will integrate AI with traditional HPC and quantum computing, enabling breakthroughs in nuclear energy safety, precision medicine, and aerospace design. The combined investment for Lux and Discovery is estimated at $1 billion, reflecting a major commitment to secure, federated, and standards-based AI infrastructure.

ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer emphasized the labs’ unique ability to steward curated data and deploy hardware and software at scale for national missions. “National Labs are perfectly suited to support this unique public-private partnership,” he said.

Solstice and Equinox: NVIDIA and Oracle Power Argonne’s AI Ambitions

At Argonne National Laboratory, the DOE is partnering with NVIDIA and Oracle to build Solstice and Equinox, the largest AI supercomputers in the DOE lab complex. These systems will be powered by 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs (Solstice) and 10,000 Blackwell GPUs (Equinox), respectively.

Both systems will use NVIDIA’s Megatron-Core library and TensorRT inference stack to enable agentic AI workflows—where AI systems can autonomously design and execute scientific experiments.
The partnership is part of a new public-private model, with industry investments and use cases, reflecting the administration’s commitment to securing U.S. leadership in AI and science.
Construction on Equinox has already begun, with delivery expected in 2026. Solstice and Equinox will be connected to DOE’s network of scientific instruments, dramatically reducing the time from idea to discovery.

Paul Kearns, Argonne’s director, noted that these systems will accelerate a broad set of scientific AI workflows and prepare thousands of researchers to leverage their capabilities.

Mission and Vision: HPE and NVIDIA Advance Los Alamos’ National Security AI

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is also receiving two new supercomputers—Mission and Vision—built by HPE and powered by NVIDIA’s upcoming Vera Rubin GPUs. These systems are part of a $370 million DOE investment to advance AI-driven research and national security.

Mission is dedicated to national security and will deliver four times the performance of LANL’s previous Crossroads system.
Vision will support unclassified research in areas like materials science, nuclear energy, and biomedical research.
Both systems feature multi-tenant capabilities, allowing multiple workloads and user groups to operate concurrently.

Thom Mason, LANL director, called the investment “a significant step forward” in computational science and AI innovation.

Industry Impact and Strategic Implications

The rapid deployment of these AI supercomputers signals a strategic shift in how the U.S. approaches scientific discovery and national competitiveness. By integrating AI with HPC and quantum computing, national labs are poised to:

Accelerate breakthroughs in energy, medicine, and materials science
Strengthen national security through advanced modeling and simulation
Foster public-private partnerships that drive innovation and secure sovereign AI infrastructure

These systems will not only transform the pace and scale of scientific research but also ensure that the U.S. remains at the forefront of the global AI race. As the DOE and its partners continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, the convergence of AI and supercomputing is set to redefine the future of science and technology.