Trump admin to receive $100 million in compute credits for AI science initiative

• The Trump admin is set to get $100 million in compute credits, POLITICO’s Sophia Cai and Business Insider’s Katie Roof report.
• The planned donation comes from National Compute.
• It’s intended to give scientific researchers access to computing power that smaller labs and companies struggle to secure.

National Compute, a new company that has pooled computing power from major tech companies, plans to donate $100 million worth of computing credits to the Trump administration to be used to advance scientific discovery.

The credits are expected to be announced Thursday at an event with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. They will support the administration’s Genesis mission, a government-wide push to use AI to accelerate scientific discovery, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The donation would give Genesis Mission researchers access to advanced computing resources at a time when smaller labs and companies can struggle to secure capacity for frontier research. Major providers often prioritise long-term contracts with the largest AI labs.

National Compute is building what it calls the National Compute Grid, a network intended to pool computing capacity from multiple providers and make it available to researchers, companies and government agencies. A draft paper explaining the project, reviewed by POLITICO, compares the grid to the power grid or interstate highway system, and describes it as a shared network connecting resources that are currently isolated.

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