Trump administration allocates $5 billion to AI research

The Trump administration announced a $5 billion federal commitment on July 22 to a major artificial intelligence initiative aimed at accelerating scientific discovery, marking a significant shift in how the government funds research. The funding for the Energy Department-led "Genesis Mission" will support 278 selected projects across more than 15 agencies, chosen from over 5,000 applications.

White House science adviser Michael Kratsios announced the commitment, which officials described as part of the largest mobilization of federal scientific resources since the Apollo program. The initiative, established by an executive order in November 2025, seeks to build what Under Secretary for Science Dario Gil called the next generation of scientific capability by creating an integrated AI platform. This platform will leverage vast federal datasets to train scientific foundation models and develop AI agents for testing hypotheses and automating research.

The largest single award is a $60 million investment in a three-year nuclear energy project named Prometheus, which aims to use AI to help design, license, manufacture, and operate nuclear reactors. The project team has raised an...