Sandia Labs is ‘well positioned’ for Trump’s Genesis Mission, officials say

Could the Genesis Mission be America’s key to winning the global race for artificial intelligence dominance?

The White House and Sandia National Laboratories think so. 

Launched in November and overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Genesis Mission aims to “unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century,” the White House said. 

This initiative will do so by building an integrated AI platform that can train models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.

Kevin Dixon, director of Sandia National Laboratories’ Applied Information Sciences Center, is leading the lab’s portion of the Genesis Mission. How much DOE funding the lab received was not disclosed, and Dixon said his team is producing deliverables for the agency quarterly.

Among America’s 17 national labs, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, which did not respond to requests for comment, each will research how the DOE can “fundamentally change the way” it delivers its missions through AI, Dixon said. 

“There is a really compelling center of mass of artificial intelligence research and applications here in the state that positions us well to capitalize on things like the Genesis Mission,” Dixon said. “The ecosystem that exists not just between Sandia, Los Alamos, our wonderful universities, some great companies in town as well — we are really well positioned here in the state to move things forward.”

The Genesis Mission is a collaborative effort between the nation’s labs, universities, scientists, data repositories and national security sites. Calling on about 40,000 experts, the initiative will address American challenges in energy dominance, discovery science and national security.

The initiative comes at a time when America finds itself in a race for global tech dominance, particularly with China, as the two are rapidly developing AI. Last year, Chinese startup DeepSeek sent U.S. financial markets tumbling as it was able to develop an AI system using fewer chips than some of its competitors, like OpenAI. 

“There’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser, whether that means economically, in terms of national security or in terms of general prosperity,” said Kenny Evans, a science and technology researcher at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. “There’s very much an existential kind of lens in which AI in particular is being driven. It’s seen as this massive power rivalry.” 

The Genesis Mission, which will focus on grid security, nuclear power plant design, fusion power, high-energy physics and material discovery, ultimately aims to give a “better understanding (of) the origins of the universe,” Dixon said. 

“(AI) can be a real force multiplier, but of itself, AI can’t solve it for you,” Dixon said. “It can help design experiments in a way that is more time efficient, so humans can spend less time on unfruitful paths and really focus on those things where it can actually help humanity.” 

President Donald Trump has made big swings to lessen dependency on critical minerals and construction materials coming from outside the U.S. in hopes of bolstering domestic supply chains and stockpiles. But Evans doesn’t believe this competition with China should be seen as “zero sum” in terms of science. 

“I think thinking of things just solely through a lens of economic and national security can be dangerous because then it’s like, what do we stand to lose by not cooperating with our competitors and strongest collaborators?” Evans said. “Which, between the U.S. and China, has been an immensely fruitful relationship.” 

The development of AI has grown enormously in the last few years following OpenAI’s 2022 release of ChatGPT. While AI tools predate the company’s popular chatbot, which boasts millions of daily users, Dixon said its capabilities have grown much more sophisticated — now having the capability to be proactive in energy distribution and better understand protein folding for medical applications.

“Sandia has invested very heavily in artificial intelligence for the 20-plus years that I’ve been there,” Dixon said, “and now we’re really seeing it kind of coalesce into a real, coherent push to really transform the way we deliver.”

Hannah García covers tech and energy for the Journal. You can reach her at hgarcia@abqjournal.com.