The White House plans to announce more than $1 billion in industry commitments to President Trump’s Genesis Mission at Thursday’s “Science: A New Golden Age Summit.” Federal agencies and the state of Georgia will also commit funding and computing access for AI-driven research.
National Compute, backed by major chipmakers, cloud and infrastructure providers, universities, venture capitalists and institutional investors, plans to donate $100 million in computing credits to the administration. The credits will support the Genesis Mission, a government-wide effort to use AI to accelerate scientific discovery.
Who Controls the Compute
The donation aims to give researchers computing resources that smaller labs and companies can struggle to secure, as major providers prioritize long-term contracts with large AI labs. Two people familiar with the plan described the donation; they weren’t authorized to discuss it and were granted anonymity.
National Compute is building the National Compute Grid, a network designed to pool capacity from multiple providers and make it available to researchers, companies and government agencies. A draft paper POLITICO reviewed compared the proposed network to the power grid or interstate highway system, connecting resources that now sit apart.
The grid would combine capacity from labs and cloud providers using Nvidia and AMD processors and Google’s tensor processing units. Users could buy computing as needed, reserve capacity for larger projects or connect their own systems. They’d pay only for the power they use.
National Compute aims to pool 2 gigawatts of computing capacity by 2030; it has allocated 750 megawatts to date. Its backers include public investors such as universities and pension funds. The White House declined to comment on the donation and computing network.
The administration will also announce a compute hub involving more than 14 institutions across 10 southeastern states, along with a $1 billion investment in Georgia to give students and faculty computing access. The National Science Foundation and the Energy Department will invest more than $100 million in AI-driven science tools.
Government Testing and Industry Access
National Compute is launching a “Grid Defense” program that lets government agencies test AI models using Marshall, an agent embedded in the grid, before deciding whether the models are safe enough to deploy. Agencies can set their own testing procedures, National Compute co-founder Anjney Midha said. The company says some details will stay confidential so frontier models can’t learn to evade evaluations.
Marshall would coordinate testing and return anonymized results to researchers. The government could see the results, while labs could decide voluntarily whether to release a model. “This is continuous frontier alignment monitoring at scale,” Midha said. The approach would “enable your public stakeholders to monitor you as they need,” he said.
Grid Defense entered invite-only early access in June with some government agencies. Starting this week, public-sector users with .gov or .mil email addresses, along with students and faculty with .edu addresses, can request access through a scheduling system. Each public-sector user will receive $100 in National Compute credits, in addition to the Genesis Mission donation.
“We think there should be thousands more Anthropics and OpenAI’s,” Midha said. “But to unleash that kind of innovation, which is extraordinarily profitable for the public, we need to reduce the barrier to entry, increase compute access, and allow the researchers and scientists to do what they do best.”
Political Demands and Limits
Trump launched the Genesis Mission last November with deadlines meant to accelerate scientific discovery. In July, the White House said the effort would expand to more than 15 federal agencies. A July report from White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios inspired the summit. It highlighted industry’s growing role in research and development and new ways to fund and organize research.
Separately, the Guardrails Alliance, a new super PAC targeting the AI industry, plans to spend $1.2 million to block AI-backed candidates in the midterm elections. The group said it would target Republicans and Democrats who don’t meet its demands, including “independent, transparent government oversight with real enforcement power.”
The group also called for a mandate addressing human impacts, from safety to economic disruption. It said AI models shouldn’t make final decisions such as denying people health care or benefits, firing or disciplining workers, or deploying weapons. The summit is expected to feature Energy Secretary Chris Wright, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and other scientists and technology leaders.