- The Genesis Mission has industry making contributions instead of winning contracts
- It leverages a unique acquisition model including a portion similar to AFWERX
- Hear directly from top federal officials about the Genesis Mission at the 2026 FedCiv Summit!
The Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission AI research effort has an unprecedented acquisition strategy that is less about contracting with industry to perform services and more about companies contributing to the effort in hope of gaining future revenue, according to an industry executive.
Nilanjan Sengupta, Thoughtworks senior vice president and Americas industry market director for public sector and health care, told ExecutiveGov in an exclusive interview that the Genesis Mission is an effort that brings together different facets of how the government engages with industry to create a collaborative platform. Some companies are offering computing power or infrastructure.
For example, Google Public Sector announced Wednesday it was contributing $40 million of AI tokens and cloud credits for researchers in support of the Genesis Mission. Academia and national research laboratories are also contributing to the program.
Sengupta called the Genesis Mission’s acquisition strategy refreshing.
“There is an investment, there is an opportunity cost, and then the revenue will flow,” Sengupta said. “I think it’s less about money and more about building something together for the future. That’s why this kind of arrangement is very encouraging.”
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What Is the Genesis Mission?
The Genesis Mission is a national initiative to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate the discovery of science, strengthen national security and drive energy innovation. It seeks to develop an integrated platform that connects the world’s best supercomputers, experimental facilities, AI systems and unique data sets across major scientific domains to double the productivity and impact of U.S. research and innovation within a decade.
Which Companies Are Involved in the Genesis Mission?
Companies involved in the Genesis Mission include some of the most high-profile names in computing technology: Oracle, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google. Sengputa said most of the collaborators are cloud solutions providers.
John Sarrao, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory director, told ExecutiveGov that the lab had industry involved in proposals that were not selected for the Genesis Mission and that it is committed to continue working with those industry partners, which he declined to identify.
Sarrao also said that SLAC is open to forming partnerships with industry and that reaching out through the Genesis Mission Consortium and SLAC’s tech transfer and strategic partnerships office are good ways to get started. SLAC is actively engaging with hardware providers, at the chip and data center levels, with cloud compute providers and with various end-use partners for whom AI can help accelerate their impact.
What’s the Genesis Mission’s Acquisition Strategy?
Sengputa said the Genesis Mission is utilizing a stack of three different acquisition models. One is the partnership intermediary model that is similar to AFWERX and SOFWERX, which seek to accelerate technology transition from small and non-traditional firms into operational use.
Another part is the other transaction model consortium model. Sengupta said the third part is contracting vehicles like cooperative research and development agreements and strategic partnership projects. He’s encouraged by this approach because the DOE is now utilizing its previously unused OT authority from the late 1970s to behave more like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Is There Any Funding for the Genesis Mission?
The DOE in March announced funding to advance the Genesis Mission, including a $293 million request for application that invited interdisciplinary teams to leverage novel AI models and frameworks to address over 20 national challenges. These spanned:
- Advanced manufacturing
- Biotechnology
- Critical materials
- Nuclear energy
- Quantum information science
A request for applications was open to interdisciplinary teams from DOE national laboratories, industry and academia. Phase I awards ranged from $500,000 to $750,000 and supported a nine-month project period. Phase II awards were to range from $6 million to $15 million over a three year project period.
Teams were encouraged to apply directly to either phase in FY 2026 and successful Phase I teams were eligible to compete for larger Phase II awards in future cycles. Applications were due by May.
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Which Projects Were Selected for the Genesis Mission?
The DOE announced on Wednesday the first projects—278 of them—selected under the Genesis Mission RFA. Of these 278 awards, 19 were led by companies. One of the projects selected was Siemens Energy’s From Static to Adaptive Grids: Autonomous Topology Control at Scale.
Siemens Energy spokesman Jake Rubin said From Static to Adaptive Grids is to develop an AI-based system to help utilities manage the transmission grid more efficiently without building new infrastructure. The project focuses on “topology control,” or strategically switching grid components to reduce congestion, improve power flow and strengthen reliability in real time.
Rubin said From Static to Adaptive Grids received a $469,000 award. Of that, Siemens Energy receives $120,000 while the largest piece, $250,000, goes to Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Another project selected was Kepler Computing’s Polaris: Angstrom-node Equivalent SRAM and Logic with Polar Materials. A third was LiftOFF Technology’s Closed-Loop Machine Learning-Guided Electrode Development for High Energy Density Batteries. DOE said on the project selection announcement that selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by the agency to issue an award or provide funding.
DOE said the largest project selected was a three-year, $60 million investment in nuclear energy that would harness AI to help deliver nuclear facilities faster while cutting operating costs. The DOE did not return requests for comment prior to publication.
The Genesis Mission started with 33 missions on a variety of science and technology challenges. These included discovering quantum algorithms with AI, achieving AI-driven autonomous laboratories, ensuring American space superiority and software understanding for national security.
Sengupta said the discovery of quantum algorithms with AI challenge was especially interesting as quantum, by its nature, supports how AI operates. Matrix multiplication is very simplified, he said, and operators with a minimal number of qubits, or a basic unit of quantum information, can train large language models.
“It’s like a force multiplier,” Sengupta said. “The more quantum develops and the more AI advances, the more it can help quantum come up with new algorithms. This is a fascinating topic.”
What Is Thoughtworks?
Thoughtworks is a technology consultancy that blends design, engineering and AI expertise. The company is not currently part of Genesis Mission, but is interested in eventually joining.
This, Sengputa said, is because the company has a mission focused on social good, public equity and doing what’s best for the future of humankind. Thoughtworks has a history of pioneering in capabilities like open-source software, microservices and data mesh.
Sengupta said Thoughtworks is a proponent for managing data well. Whether it’s in a decentralized way or having a proper semantic layer, the company has a data product workbench that can quickly create data products which become the foundational blocks of building, teaching and creating learning mechanisms for new and innovative AI models. The company is interested in offering this capability as part of a strategic partnership project or a small business innovative research Phase III program.
