NVIDIA, Oracle Partner To Build DOE’s Largest AI Supercomputer

Key takeaways

NVIDIA announced a landmark collaboration with Oracle on Tuesday to build the U.S. Department of Energy's largest artificial intelligence supercomputer, marking a significant expansion of AI computing capabilities for scientific research.

The partnership, unveiled at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., will deliver two interconnected systems to Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

The larger system, named Solstice, will feature 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell graphics processing units, while a second system called Equinox will house 10,000 Blackwell GPUs.

Together, the supercomputers will provide 2,200 exaflops of AI performance.

"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 Oracle, we're building the Department of Energy's largest supercomputer 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 science."

Public-private partnership model drives deployment

The project represents a new approach to federal computing infrastructure through a public-private partnership model that incorporates industry investments and shared use cases.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright emphasized the collaborative nature of the initiative during the announcement.

"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 Wright. "The two Argonne systems and the collaboration between the Department of Energy, NVIDIA, and Oracle represent a new common-sense 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."

The Equinox system is expected to become available in the first half of 2026, though NVIDIA and the DOE have not provided a specific timeline for when Solstice will come online.

Expanding research capabilities across national laboratories

The Argonne systems will enable scientists to develop and train frontier AI models using NVIDIA's Megatron-Core library and TensorRT inference software.

The supercomputers are designed to support what the partners call "agentic scientists" — AI systems capable of independently driving research workflows and accelerating discovery.

"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 K. Kearns, director of Argonne National Laboratory. "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."

Oracle's role in the partnership centers on providing cloud infrastructure capabilities to support the massive computing requirements.

"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."

Part of the broader DOE supercomputing expansion

The Argonne announcement is part of a broader push by the Department of Energy to expand AI computing across its national laboratory system.

In addition to Solstice and Equinox, Argonne will receive three other NVIDIA-based systems named Tara, Minerva, and Janus, which will be made available to researchers at other facilities.

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will also receive two new supercomputers built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise using NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform.

The Mission system, expected in late 2027, will support the National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing program for classified applications, while the Vision system will handle unclassified AI research.

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