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U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing the Genesis Mission, a sweeping federal initiative designed to harness artificial intelligence to speed up scientific discovery across critical research areas ranging from biotechnology to nuclear energy.
The order directs the Department of Energy to transform the nation's network of national laboratories into a centralized AI-powered research platform, bringing together what the White House described as "America's brightest minds, most powerful computers, and vast scientific data" into a single cooperative system.
Under the directive, the Energy Department will build a closed-loop AI experimentation platform that integrates federal supercomputers and scientific databases to generate foundation models and operate robotic laboratories. The administration aims to dramatically expand the productivity of federal research and development within the next decade.
The Genesis Mission designates the Energy Secretary as the lead coordinator for the initiative, while the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology will oversee integration of data and infrastructure from across the federal government. The Special Advisor for AI and Crypto will also participate in coordinating partnerships with academic institutions and private sector companies.
Priority research areas include biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion energy, space exploration, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics. The administration framed these fields as addressing national security, economic competitiveness, and public health challenges.
The White House fact sheet accompanying the order pointed to what it characterized as declining efficiency in scientific research despite increased funding. According to the statement, research budgets have grown substantially since the 1990s, yet new drug approvals have declined and more researchers are now required to achieve equivalent scientific outputs.
The administration argues that AI technologies can compress research timelines by generating protein structure models, designing and analyzing experiments, and processing data at speeds far exceeding traditional methods. Work that previously required years could potentially be completed in weeks or months, according to the White House.
The national laboratories already possess the large-scale organized datasets and computing infrastructure that AI systems require, positioning them to serve as the foundation for the new platform.
The Genesis Mission comes as the latest action in a series of AI-related executive orders issued by the Trump administration throughout 2025. In January, Trump signed an order reversing Biden administration AI policies, followed by directives in April promoting AI education and July orders addressing AI use in federal government and technology exports.
The administration released an AI Action Plan in July outlining nearly 100 federal actions to advance American AI innovation and infrastructure. In September, Trump signed an order applying AI to pediatric cancer research through the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative, which he originally established in 2019.
The White House emphasized that the initiative aims to maintain what it called American global dominance in artificial intelligence development and deployment.
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