The Department of Energy is gearing up to create a new class of science-specific, open-weight AI models in collaboration with industry as part of its recently launched Genesis Open Models Initiative.
The agency is collecting information from interested organizations that want to partner on the project. Contributions are welcome throughout the development lifecycle — from the base, foundational systems to domain-specific datasets and fine-tuning expertise to shape adapted versions for particular applications.
“These Genesis models aim to provide researchers, national laboratories, industry partners, and the broader open science community with powerful, transparent, and extensible AI models that can be adapted to a wide range of scientific domains and use cases,” the Energy Department said in its overview of the initiative. “By releasing models with open-weights, DOE seeks to galvanize the scientific and AI communities around shared infrastructure for science.”
The agency said the first model in its new class, called Genesis-Science-1, is under development. U.S.-based open intelligence lab Arcee is working on the model alongside DOE scientists and other contributors.
“The Genesis Mission exists to turn America’s scientific infrastructure — our laboratories, our data, our computing — into an engine of discovery,” Darío Gil, DOE undersecretary for science and Genesis Mission director, said in a statement. “Genesis-Science-1 puts that idea to work: an open model trained on the real work of the national laboratories and answerable to the scientists who do it.”
The Genesis Open Models Initiative is the newest branch to grow from the ever-expanding Genesis Mission. The core of the effort includes goals to combine the latest technological advancements to stand up supercomputers, launch a national platform and double the productivity of the country’s research-and-development budget.
As DOE has chipped away at it, the Genesis Mission has evolved to contain a multitude of layers and side quests — such as Quantum Genesis, which was announced in June — that act as a roadmap to bring the federal government closer to its outlined aspirations.
The agency sees its latest project focused on open-weight models as a step toward “lowering barriers to advanced AI capabilities for the public good,” per DOE’s announcement.
Interested organizations can apply to participate by the end of this week to join the foundation-stage development efforts. Groups that want to assist with post-training data and environments are encouraged to apply by Aug. 25. Additional deadlines are expected on a rolling basis every three months.