The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to deploy two new artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), with one being built under a new public-private partnership model aimed at accelerating the United States’ capabilities in science and technology.
The first system, named Lux, will use AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, and AMD Pensando advanced networking. It is scheduled for deployment in early 2026 and is intended to boost DOE’s AI capacity for national priorities such as fusion, fission, materials discovery, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and grid modernization. The Lux system will feature an open AI software stack designed to support innovation and competitiveness.
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. That’s why the Trump administration is announcing the first example of a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships with Lux. We are also announcing, as part of a competitive procurement process, Discovery. Working with AMD and HPE, we’re bringing new capacity online faster than ever before, turning shared innovation into national strength, and proving that America leads when private-public partners build together.”
AMD chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su commented: “We are proud and honored to partner with the U.S. Department of Energy and Secretary Wright to accelerate America’s AI compute infrastructure. This partnership exemplifies public-private collaboration at its best. With Discovery and Lux, we are delivering leadership compute systems that combine performance and energy efficiency to advance America’s research priorities and strengthen U.S. leadership in AI, energy, and national security.”
According to DOE officials, this public-private partnership model enables faster deployment by allowing co-investments from both government agencies and private companies like AMD and HPE. This approach aims to reduce setup times for supercomputers from years to months while providing shared access for research needs across sectors.
Discovery—the second system—will be procured through traditional means but is expected to surpass current leading systems when it arrives in 2028. Built on HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 architecture with next-generation AMD processors (EPYC “Venice”) and Instinct MI430X GPUs, Discovery is set to integrate high-performance computing with AI capabilities as well as quantum technologies.
HPE president and CEO Antonio Neri said: “We are proud to build on our strong U.S. public-private partnership with the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and AMD that first began when we debuted the Frontier exascale supercomputer and broke a significant computing speed barrier… Together, we will continue to strengthen U.S. national leadership in the era of AI and accelerate scientific breakthroughs and innovation with Discovery and Lux.”
ORNL Laboratory Director Stephen Streiffer added: “The Discovery system will drive scientific innovation faster and farther than ever before… With Discovery and Lux, we’re accelerating the pace of Gold Standard Science at a scale that secures America’s leadership in an increasingly competitive world.”
Both supercomputers are designed not only for speed but also secure data movement between sites—a critical need for integrating modeling work with experimentation—and rapid response solutions aligned with national interests.
DOE notes more than $1 billion has been committed via these partnerships among DOE itself along with industry partners AMD https://www.amd.com/en.html and HPE https://www.hpe.com/us/en/home.html, aiming for swift enhancement of America’s computational resources.
