The U.S. Department of Energy announced 12 new Genesis Mission awards totaling $159 million on Oct. 8, including projects to build an AI-enabled fusion-device digital twin and improve scientific supercomputing software. NVIDIA separately announced a five-year, $1 billion commitment to U.S. science and quantum computing.
The DOE projects are meant to apply AI to specific research bottlenecks. A team led by Commonwealth Fusion Systems will build a digital twin, a computer model used to simulate and optimize operations of a fusion demonstration device. An Argonne National Laboratory-led project will develop tools to modernize, optimize and verify scientific software used on supercomputers. Another project, led by the University of California San Diego, plans to expand an RNA-structure database fivefold for training AI models.
The $159 million applies to the 12 new Phase II awards. DOE says the new selections bring its Phase II portfolio to 14 projects when two earlier awards are included. The release also lists six new Phase I awards but does not include them in the $159 million total.
NVIDIA's separate commitment is broader: the company says it will support higher-education research institutions, U.S. quantum-computing leadership and cloud providers that support government missions over the next five years. NVIDIA is also a collaborator on some of the DOE's new Phase II projects, but the company did not say that its full $1 billion commitment will go to Genesis or disclose a recipient-by-recipient schedule.
Both announcements describe planned work and commitments, not completed scientific results. The DOE release names the projects but does not report project-level award amounts or outcomes.
Image: CINECA's Galileo supercomputer rack in Italy, shown for illustration; it is not a Genesis Mission system. Photo by CINECA via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Sources
U.S. Department of Energy: Genesis Mission awards · NVIDIA: five-year science commitment