FT : Nvidia supplier SK Hynix has already sold next year’s chips on AI boom

Nvidia supplier SK Hynix has already sold next year’s chips on AI boom
South Korean chipmaker points to difficulty in meeting demand as it posts record profits

SK Hynix said it had already sold next year’s production of semiconductors as the leading supplier of advanced memory chips to Nvidia posted record profits on the back of an artificial intelligence boom.

Operating profit in the third quarter jumped 62 per cent year on year to a record Won11.4tn ($8bn), in line with analyst forecasts compiled by LSEG SmartEstimate. Revenue rose 39 per cent to Won22.4tn, driven by surging demand for memory chips used in AI data centres, the company said on Wednesday.

The South Korean chipmaker said in a statement that demand for its cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in AI hardware would continue to outstrip supply as use of AI applications broadened.

Inventory for dynamic random-access memory (Dram) chips, which enable short-term data storage when a device is being used, was also “extremely tight”, said Kim Kyu-hyun, head of Dram marketing.

“Our Dram, Nand as well as HBM capacity [for next year] has been sold out,” said Kim, referring to SK Hynix’s main memory products. “Customers are buying even conventional memory chips for 2026 in advance.”

Optimism for SK Hynix’s business outlook intensified after the company, along with rival Samsung Electronics, signed a preliminary agreement with OpenAI this month to supply semiconductors for the ChatGPT maker’s $500bn Stargate data centre project.

SK Hynix said its estimate for demand from the project was more than double the industry’s current HBM capacity and that it would set up a production system to meet OpenAI’s demand.

The chipmaker said it had completed HBM supply negotiations with other key customers for next year and would “substantially increase” capital expenditure as a result. It will begin supplying its most advanced HBM4 chips in the fourth quarter of this year.

“HBM demand continues to increase rapidly, so it will be difficult for supply to meet demand any time soon,” said Kim Ki-tae, head of HBM sales and marketing.

SK Hynix makes up more than half of the global HBM market, while Samsung accounts for just over a quarter, with US-based Micron, the other leading company in the sector, according to consultancy TrendForce.

The company’s competitive edge in HBM has helped triple its share price this year, making SK Hynix one of South Korea’s best-performing stocks. Its shares rose 4 per cent on Wednesday.

The OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a laptop showing red digital graphics with numbers.
SK Hynix said the AI market’s shift to inference — the process by which applications such as chatbots produce responses — had increased demand for high-performance AI server chips.

“We project AI inference memory demand to expand not only in the US but also in China as Chinese hyperscalers are expected to push for AI inference investment,” Citi analysts said in a recent report.

Samsung is expected to post its biggest quarterly profit in three years when it reports on Thursday.

“With AI as the major driver, we’re expecting the HBM market to continue growing steeply over the next few years to around $43bn by 2027, giving strong earnings leverage to memory manufacturers like SK,” said MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research.

FT : Hedge fund tactics fuel Europe’s market for non-existent debt

Hedge fund tactics fuel Europe’s market for non-existent debt
Ardagh’s $10bn restructuring allows creditors to command big premiums for ‘when issued’ bonds

Ardagh’s looming restructuring is adding fuel to a busy European market for debt that doesn’t yet exist, as hedge funds make bumper paper profits selling hypothetical bonds at large premiums.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of debt that would be issued after a proposed restructuring at the Luxembourg-based maker of glass and metal drinks containers has changed hands in recent months at prices as high as 110 cents on the dollar, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trading in Ardagh debt on a “when issued” basis comes after months in which new debt from Altice France, the European arm of Patrick Drahi’s heavily indebted telecoms empire, was sold to investors before it was issued upon completion of the restructuring.

The burgeoning market in such debt is a sign of the aggressive tactics employed by creditors of conglomerates that were built up in the era of cheap money. As businesses have been forced to restructure by higher interest rates, creditors have clubbed together in co-operation agreements to secure favourable terms.

These include not only writing down debt in exchange for some equity but also providing new and expensive debt to companies once they emerge from a restructuring. Some creditors have sought to profit early while staying in the driver’s seat, by selling their rights to the new bonds before they come into existence.

“In a restructuring, obviously the company is not in the world’s strongest position, which means that lenders, whose consent may be needed, can push things harder . . . there’s often only a limited amount the company can do about the pricing [of the new debt],” said Richard Tett, a restructuring partner at law firm Freshfields. “It’s definitely becoming more common.”

The interest rate on new debt is priced in accordance with the company’s financial health before the restructuring but is issued by a “bright, new, post-restructuring capital structure and is generally senior ranking”, often making it worth paying a premium for, Tett added.

Ardagh announced its restructuring deal in July after more than a year of negotiations with creditors owed more than $10bn. The deal has yet to be sanctioned but has support from the vast majority of creditors.

Founder Paul Coulson, who built Ardagh from a small Dublin bottling plant through two decades of debt-fuelled acquisitions, would cede control under the restructuring to a group of bondholders. Shareholders would receive $300mn, of which just over $100mn would go to Coulson.

The group’s riskiest $1.7bn of so-called payment-in-kind bonds would be fully written off in exchange for a 7.5 per cent stake in the business. The remaining equity would be passed to Ardagh’s unsecured bondholders, including London’s Arini Capital Management — founded by former Credit Suisse trader Hamza Lemssouguer — and US-based Canyon Partners, as part of a debt-for-equity swap.

Existing bondholders would also provide $1.5bn of new funding to the group, while a loan that Apollo Global Management provided last year would be repaid in full.

Those existing creditors have already been able to offload hundreds of millions of dollars in the yet-to-be-issued bonds to investors willing to pay over the odds, attracted by an interest rate of 9.5 per cent on debt that would be issued by a company with much lower leverage than before the restructuring.

“Co-op agreements make it impossible to trade old [credit] facilities between groups,” said one bond investor who has been trading Ardagh’s potential new debt. “‘When issued’ offers a way to get around that . . .[but buyers] have to have conviction that the deal will go through.”

Although credit investors have bought large amounts of Ardagh’s debt on the basis that the restructuring will go ahead, dissenting creditors Deutsche Bank and hedge fund Carronade Capital are opposing the deal. If for any reason the transaction does not go through, the sales will have to be unwound.

Earlier this year, some traders were quoting Thames Water’s then- proposed €3bn in emergency financing, that was to be provided by senior creditors including hedge funds Elliott and Silver Point, at 112 per cent of face value while the new debt issuance was still being challenged in court. It has since been waved through.

FT : German start-ups set for deal on kamikaze drones with Rheinmetall

German start-ups set for deal on kamikaze drones with Rheinmetall
Contracts worth up to €900mn put Helsing and Stark on track to help buttress Nato’s eastern flank against Russia


Germany plans to award a contract for kamikaze drones to defence start-ups Helsing and Stark as it seeks to boost defences against Russia as well as fuel competition in the defence sector. 

The two German start-ups and the country’s largest contractor Rheinmetall will receive a share of the contract, worth close to €300mn each, according to three people familiar with the matter. 

Formal agreements have yet to be signed, but if the contracts are approved by the German parliament’s budget committee, they are likely to be the biggest deals won by the two young start-ups.

Under the agreement, the three companies will agree to provide up to 12,000 drones, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions, although only part of that number will be delivered up front.

They are expected to be supplied to a new German brigade stationed in Lithuania with the aim of defending Nato’s eastern flank against Russia. 

Officials hope that dividing the tender between the three companies will encourage innovation, according to people familiar with the situation.

“They’re doing it to keep the competition alive and make sure they get the best system,” one of the people said.

The deal comes as European nations seek to beef up their capacity for drone warfare, both by embracing defensive technologies to protect against drone incursions and also offensive drones for striking enemy targets.

Investment in Europe’s defence technology start-ups has surged since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with venture capital firms piling into military businesses.

Helsing, backed by Spotify founder Daniel Ek, is Europe’s most valuable defence start-up with a valuation of €12bn. 

Over the past year it has announced plans to supply 6,000 strike drones for Ukraine, bought German aircraft manufacturer Grob and unveiled plans to manufacture underwater surveillance systems in the UK.

Stark, founded just 15 months ago, is backed by investors including US tech billionaire Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital. The start-up has a team in Ukraine engaged in testing and development and in July it announced it would open a factory in the English town of Swindon.

Plans to award part of the contract to the tanks and artillery giant Rheinmetall, which has already won tens of billions of euros of government contracts, took some defence executives by surprise.

Though the company has partnerships with the US drone-maker Anduril and the Israeli company UVision, until recently it did not have its own in-house armed drone.

The Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall offered to supply the German military with an armed drone called the FV-014, which it unveiled publicly in September, according to two people familiar with the matter. Also known as Raider, the FV-014 can carry a 5kg payload and has a range of 100km, according to the company.

Stark will provide its Virtus armed drone and Helsing its HX-2.

Rheinmetall has “managed to find a way in,” said one German defence industry executive.

Helsing, Stark, Rheinmetall and the German procurement office all declined to comment.

FT : Phoenix in talks to raise more than £1bn to bolster its pensions buyout bus

Phoenix in talks to raise more than £1bn to bolster its pensions buyout business
FTSE 100 group confirms it has held discussions with potential partners over pension-risk transfer unit fundraising

Phoenix Group is in talks to raise more than £1bn from private capital firms as it seeks to expand its pension-risk transfer business and win a bigger share of an increasingly competitive and lucrative part of the insurance market.

The UK’s largest savings and retirement business had held talks with firms including Blackstone, Sixth Street and KKR about a possible deal that would enable it to bid for more and larger buyouts of pension pots, according to people familiar with the matter.

A final transaction could lead to Phoenix partnering with an asset manager to source and manage some assets, the people added. The new funds will allow the insurer to compete for more pension liabilities and the assets backing them.

The potential deal comes as Phoenix has been undertaking a strategic shift to manage more annuity-backed assets internally, while building up its team managing listed and private investments. Last month, it said it would pull £20bn from Aberdeen Group to manage in house.

Phoenix confirmed that it was in initial talks over “a potential third-party partnership to accelerate the growth” of its PRT business. It added that talks were at an early stage and there was no certainty of an agreement.

The FTSE 100 pensions provider has been seeking to bulk up in the UK’s pension buyout market. It had also sought to acquire billions of pounds of pension liabilities from Ford in a £4.6bn deal that was ultimately won by rival Legal & General this week. 

The UK’s PRT market, in which companies pay insurers to take on their financial obligations to retirees, has also attracted private capital groups including Brookfield and Apollo. In July, Apollo-backed insurer Athora struck a £5.7bn deal to acquire the Pension Insurance Corporation. 

The fundraising aims to give Phoenix more firepower to originate private credit and infrastructure — particularly in North America — and package those assets so that they meet solvency rules for UK insurers, according to people familiar with the deal.

It could also give Phoenix more of an edge as it bids for larger pension pots, a segment of the market that has been dominated by L&G, PIC and Rothesay, the insurer founded by Goldman Sachs.

Phoenix’s Standard Life completed its largest transaction to date in August, a £1.9bn buy-in for members of Marsh McLennan’s UK pension fund.

UK companies were expected to offload more than £40bn in pension obligations this year, according to specialist consultancy LCP.

Blackstone, KKR and Sixth Street declined to comment.

FT : If fraud is like cockroaches, beware the next infestation

If fraud is like cockroaches, beware the next infestation
BNP Paribas is the latest bank to take a hit from fraud, and as financial conditions shift, it will not be the last

For those who worry about the fragility of the financial system, there is something oddly reassuring about fraud. If banks are going to face unexpected costs for loans going bad, it’s better that they are the result of a few “cockroaches”, as JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon characterised them recently, than a broad, corrosive deterioration in credit conditions.

By that token, recent sightings should be irksome, rather than systemically concerning. The latest scuttled out from BNP Paribas, which took a €190mn charge over a fraud related to receivables financing. Regional US banks Zions and Western Alliance also recently claimed they had been defrauded, and authorities are investigating possible knavery around the collapses of auto-loan company Tricolor and car-parts maker First Brands.

But what happens if fraud does become an endemic part of the system? Certainly, the conditions that enable corporate grift are getting more favourable. Those are pressure, opportunity and rationalisation — the three points of what criminologist Donald Cressey in the 1950s called a “fraud triangle”.

For an idea of the pressure company managers might be under, thanks to high interest rates, tariffs and other kinds of uncertainty, look no further than corporate insolvencies. Those in Europe and the US are rising. In the UK, the level has lingered around a 30-year high for the past two years.


Opportunity is increasing too. Private credit firms are falling over themselves to allocate capital; banks are fighting to provide them with investment opportunities. Financial history shows all too well that in times of exuberance, standards tend to slip. Technology also brings more ways to defraud, fake documentation and bamboozle consumers and counterparties.

The real bogeyman is rationalisation — the “everybody does it” defence. There too, it’s hard to believe that the conditions aren’t worsening. In a decade-old study, participants in a dice-rolling game proved more likely to lie about their score in countries with a higher prevalence of rule violations. Wealth hardly engenders honesty: a Californian study found drivers of fancier cars more likely to enter a four-way junction when it isn’t their turn.

If Cressey was right, the US should be on particularly high alert. Alongside rising economic pressure and slipping lending standards, it isn’t hard to see how the cavalier approach of the Trump administration to conflicts of interest and enrichment of insiders might support rationalisation. On top of that, the deep cuts to anti-scam regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission may reduce deterrents.

So if the corners of the fraud triangle really are getting sharper, what then? Companies, lenders and investors will have to spend more to raise their defences. But given the fertile conditions for corporate misbehaviour, the troubling conclusion is that cockroaches creeping into view today will turn out to be nothing compared with those yet to hatch.

FT : Lakshmi Mittal’s energy venture bought Russian oil transported on blacklist

Lakshmi Mittal’s energy venture bought Russian oil transported on blacklisted ships
Indian refinery received at least four crude shipments this year worth almost $280mn on sanctions-listed vessels

Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s energy joint venture in India has bought Russian oil transported on sanctions-listed vessels, according to an analysis of satellite imagery, shipping data and customs records by the Financial Times.

The Guru Gobind Singh Refinery in Punjab, a major oil refinery co-owned by the long-term UK resident’s Mittal Energy, received at least four crude shipments worth almost $280mn this year which had been transported most of the way from Russia on sanctions-listed ships.

The oil was transported on the US-blacklisted vessels between July and September from the Arctic port of Murmansk to as far as the Gulf of Oman. The final leg of the journey into India was undertaken on the Samadha, a tanker that is not on US sanctions lists, though it was blacklisted by the EU.

All of the ships involved in the process sought to conceal their behaviour with a combination of deceptive practices, either shutting off their transponders or using them to broadcast false positions.

It is not known who arranged for the oil to be transported on the sanctioned tankers, nor if HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) — the entity that owns the refinery — was aware of the use of the vessels.

Emily Kilcrease, a director at the Centre for a New American Security and a former US trade and security official, said: “If I were advising the buyer, I would want to make sure that you had enough visibility in the full transport chain to make sure that you’re not one hop or two hops from a sanctioned activity.”


Best known as the executive chair of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest integrated steel and mining group, Mittal has built a globe-spanning business empire. The billionaire, who has sat on the board of Goldman Sachs since 2008, told associates earlier this year that he intends to leave the UK over changes to its taxation rules.

The revelations about the shipments come as the US is seeking to raise the pressure on Indian companies not to buy Russian oil. Washington last week imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Moscow’s two leading oil producers, in an effort to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in negotiations with Ukraine.

HMEL is a joint venture between part of the Mittal group and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, an Indian state company, with each holding a 49 per cent stake. The remaining 2 per cent is in the hands of financial institutions, according to the company.

HMEL and Mittal did not respond to requests for comment.

Before last week’s US sanctions, western allies of Ukraine had already imposed a price cap aimed at limiting the profits Russia was able to reap from the trade. Oil tankers that did not comply or used various deceptive shipping practices have also been sanctioned by the EU, UK and US.

India has become one of the biggest importers of Russian crude after Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, profiting from discounted prices as western buyers turned away.

Russia has exported an average of 5mn barrels a day of seaborne crude this year, with 1.7mn b/d of the total being purchased by India, according to data analytics group Kpler. The next largest share headed to China.

Kilcrease said: “The major consumers of this oil really want [it]. They’ve been willing to take a certain amount of risk of coming into the US Treasury’s sights.”

The four deliveries identified by the FT all followed a similar pattern, with the Samadha repeatedly heading in and out of the port of Mundra in Gujarat, western India, to pick up the oil brought to the area on the sanctioned ships.

According to its transponder signals, the Samadha was simply travelling back and forth from Oman, where it would moor and load. After a pause, it would then broadcast that it was sailing back to India.

The vessel, however, was often not where it claimed to be. Satellite images analysed by the FT throughout this period and compared with transponder data show that, once the Samadha left port, it often sent a falsified position that disguised its true location.

While it claimed to be on these shuttle runs to Oman, the Samadha was actually meeting the other ships further offshore. Each of the four journeys included a meeting with another ship caught on satellite images.

Each image shows a large, grey vessel, consistent with the Samadha, at anchor in the Gulf of Oman, lined up side-by-side with another tanker. This position suggests a ship-to-ship transfer of goods.

The vessels appear to be the Belgorod, Danshui, Dignity and Primorye — all of which had been added earlier to sanctions lists by the US. The images of the vessels match other images of these ships obtained by the FT.

TankerTrackers, a maritime intelligence company, confirmed the identity of the ships during their monitoring of the Gulf of Oman — an area that they usually surveil for ship-to-ship transfers involving Iranian oil.

In each case, the sanctions-listed ships sailing from Murmansk went “dark” as they approached the Gulf of Oman, switching off their transponders for between three and six days, the exact window during which each photographed transfer took place. They turned them back on again shortly after.

The dates of the Samadha’s journeys also match customs records filings, seen by the FT, made by refinery owner HMEL to Indian authorities for purchases from Varda LLC, a St Petersburg oil supplier. Three of the forms explicitly name the Samadha as the carrier.

The filings also report that the four shipments had a total value of $277mn.

The records also indicate that all of the shipments were for two grades of Arctic oil — Novy Port and Arco. In January, the US targeted Russia’s Arctic oil business with sanctions, announcing curbs on tankers and other infrastructure affecting Arco and other grades.

Guru Gobind Singh refinery, located in the Bathinda area of Punjab, is the 10th largest in India, able to process 11.3mn tonnes a year. At Mundra, the crude shipments were deposited into a 1,000km-long pipeline to the inland refinery.

The FT was unable to contact the Samadha’s registered owner and manager, Erika Freight Limited, a company about which almost nothing is known beyond its relationship with the vessel.

The Samadha has since been placed under sanctions by the UK. Its owner shares a registered address in the Seychelles with 13 other so-called shadow fleet vessels — ships against whom it is difficult to enforce sanctions because their ownership is opaque.

The FT was not able to reach Varda LLC in St Petersburg, which does not have any online presence and does not list any contact details in Russian corporate records.

>>> US After Hours Summary: TER +21.8%, BE +19.1%, NBR +10.6%, ZWS +5.8%, STX +4

After Hours Summary: TER +21.8%, BE +19.1%, NBR +10.6%, ZWS +5.8%, STX +4.3% higher on earnings; LRN -37.6%, VRNS -32.1%, ENPH -9.6%, MOD -8.8% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: TER +21.8% (also names new CFO), BE +19.1%, BBNX +14.9%, NBR +10.6%, ZWS +5.8% (also increases dividend, increases share repurchase authorization to $500 mln), HRZN +4.8%, CGAU +4.5%, STX +4.3%, FLS +4.2% (also to divest BW/IP - New Mexico), ORN +4.2%, KIDS +4.1% (also FDA approves its 3P Pediatric Plating Platform Small-Mini System), MSA +3.9%, LOGI +3.8%, ST +3.8%, BKNG +3.5%, RNR +3.5%, EXE +3.3%, MIR +3.3%, NGD +3.1%, AMRZ +2.1%, WPC +1.3%, AROC +1.3% (also increases share repurchase authorization by $100 mln), APAM +1%, EIX +1%, AUR +1%, RRC +0.9%, FER +0.8%, OKE +0.7%, V +0.6% (also increases dividend), RCUS +0.6%, VLTO +0.4%, FYBR +0.3%, KAI +0.3%, EQR +0.2%, FCPT +0.2%, HIW +0.1%, NTB +0.1%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: ZEUS +13.9% (RYI and ZEUS to merge; also reports earnings), JOBY +7.4% (collaboration with NVIDIA), RGTI +3.7% (supporting NVIDIA NVQLink), TTRX +3% (supply and license agreement with Medline), BFST +3% (authorizes new $30 mln share repurchase program), TCMD +1.6% (study demonstrates benefits of Flexitouch Plus), AISP +1.6% (stock offering by selling shareholder), OII +1.4% (wins contract by bp Exploration), EL +0.9% (EL and SHOP form partnership), CE +0.8% (ESI to acquire Micromax from Celanese for $500 mln), COHR +0.6% (launches next generation optical fiber), MORN +0.3% (new regional hub in Australia), OSUR +0.3% (names new Chair of the Board), MPTI +0.2% (forms sales and manufacturing partnership with Indiana Microelectronics), MFIN +0.1% (names new CEO)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: LRN -37.6%, VRNS -32.1% (also authorizes new $150 mln share repurchase program), TYGO -11.9%, GIC -11.8%, ENPH -9.6%, MOD -8.8%, MTH -7.4%, GBX -7.2%, CZR -6.2%, MDLZ -5.6%, TX -5.2%, UCTT -4.9%, NBIX -4.3%, CSGP -4.1%, RRR -2.9% (also authorizes new $300 mln share repurchase program), BTSG -2.9%, CAKE -2.8%, CWH -2.6%, CHE -2.5%, ESI -1.5% (also to acquire Micromax from Celanese for $500 mln), LSTR -1.1%, PPG -0.8%, EXLS -0.3%, AKR -0.1%, EA -0.1%, IVT -0.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: AKBA -22% (provides update on Vafseo for non-dialysis patients), RYI -2.2% (RYI and ZEUS to merge; also reports earnings), KLIC -1.4% (CEO to retire), ARMN -1.3% (positive pea results for the TOROPARU Gold project), BRX -1.2% (files mixed securities shelf offering), LFUS -1% (to acquire Basler Electric), PPTA -0.9% ($70 mln stock offering), DKL -0.3% (increases dividend), PSKY -0.3% (10-year lease agreement), AAPL -0.2% (planning display upgrades across MacBook Air, iPad Air, and iPad mini lines, according to Bloomberg), SHOP -0.2% (EL and SHOP form partnership), HRL -0.1% (partnership with Forward Consumer), UNF -0.1% (increases dividend)

>>> NVIDIA and Oracle to Build US Department of Energy’s Largest AI Supercompute

NVIDIA and Oracle to Build US Department of Energy’s Largest AI Supercomputer for Scientific DiscoveryBold US Investment of 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs Kickstarts Era of Agentic AI-Powered Science at Argonne National Laboratory for Public Researchers

- NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announce a landmark collaboration with Oracle to build the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s largest AI supercomputer to boost scientific discovery.
- Solstice system will feature a record-breaking 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to accelerate the DOE’s mission of driving technological leadership across U.S. security, science and energy applications, plus an Equinox system to feature 10,000 Blackwell GPUs.
- The new DOE systems at Argonne National Laboratory will revolutionize scientific discovery and dramatically accelerate productivity for research and development in America.
- Announced a landmark collaboration with Oracle to build the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s largest AI supercomputer to dramatically accelerate scientific discovery.
- The Solstice system will feature a record-breaking 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and support the DOE’s mission of developing AI capabilities to drive technological leadership across U.S. security, science and energy applications. Another system, Equinox, will include 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and is expected to be available in the first half of 2026. Both systems will be interconnected by NVIDIA networking and deliver a combined 2,200 exaflops of AI performance.
- The Solstice and Equinox supercomputers will be located at Argonne National Laboratory. They will enable scientists and researchers to develop and train new frontier models and AI reasoning models for open science using the NVIDIA Megatron-Core library and scale them using the NVIDIA TensorRT™ inference software stack. These models will form the backbone of agentic AI workflows for scientific discovery.
- Both AI supercomputers will support NVIDIA, Argonne and the DOE’s research collaborations to develop agentic scientists, boosting R&D productivity and accelerating discovery enabled by public research dollars within a decade. Solstice will be built with the DOE’s new public-private partnership model, including industry investments and use cases. This reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to securing America’s leadership in AI and science.
- The AI supercomputers will serve as the foundation for a larger-scale collaboration across science, energy and national security to deploy next-generation infrastructure and further secure U.S. leadership in AI for decades to come.