- The Genesis Mission now spans 15-plus agencies, anchored by DOE’s American Science and Security Platform
- The challenges involve healthcare, energy, infrastructure and national security issues
- The news builds on earlier steps, including a $1 billion DOE-Japan partnership in June
The White House has announced more than $5 billion in federal commitments to expand the Genesis Mission, its national effort to apply artificial intelligence to scientific research, alongside a set of new mission-driven challenges. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, unveiled the commitments Wednesday.
President Donald Trump established the Genesis Mission through a November 2025 executive order; the effort began at the Department of Energy. It has since grown into a whole-of-government initiative involving more than 15 federal agencies, which will contribute research awards, datasets and facilities to a slate of National Science and Technology Challenges. The agencies will draw on the DOE-built American Science and Security Platform, a shared infrastructure connecting researchers with data, compute and AI tools.
What Are the Genesis Mission’s National Science and Technology Challenges?
The challenges span healthcare, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and national security. On the health side, the Department of Health and Human Services is leading efforts to trace the root causes of chronic disease, unlock pediatric cancer treatments and speed drug discovery through an NIH-led Bio Genesis Mission.
Energy and infrastructure challenges include leveraging AI and digital twins to sharpen grid planning and day-to-day operations under a joint effort between DOE and the Department of Transportation. Security-focused challenges task the Department of War and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration with compressing weapons design timelines, while a six-agency group works to detect and attribute biological threats. NASA, led by 2026 Wash100 Award winner Jared Isaacman, is contributing two challenges centered on space superiority and mining more than 150 petabytes of mission data for discoveries.
How Much Is Each Agency Committing to Genesis Mission?
DOE announced 278 projects selected from the largest funding-opportunity response in its history — 87 led by its national laboratories, 168 by universities, 19 by companies and four by nonprofits. These include a $60 million nuclear energy investment over three years.
The National Science Foundation committed a $380 million investment to establish 20 AI-enabled autonomous laboratory nodes with the Astera Institute, plus more than $80 million for data infrastructure and up to $100 million for AI-ready datasets.
DOW said it is on track to commit more than $200 million in fiscal 2026 and over $1.3 billion in fiscal 2027, anchored by a Digital Biosecurity Forge project with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Emil Michael, under secretary of war for research and engineering and a 2026 Wash100 Award winner, said the department is scaling investments in AI, quantum computing and biotechnology.
IBM, a member of the Genesis Mission Consortium, will provide up to $50 million in access to quantum computing over five years and has been selected to lead one of the DOE projects.
How Does This Build on Earlier Genesis Mission Funding?
Wednesday’s announcement follows a string of earlier moves. DOE issued a $293 million request for applications in March covering more than 20 challenge areas, and the department committed over $320 million in December for AI models, robotics and autonomous laboratories.
In June, DOE and Japan launched a $1 billion partnership that made Japan the mission’s first international participant. The White House said further announcements on industry, philanthropy and international engagement are ahead.
