Oak Ridge National Laboratory and New York-based startup Autonomous Resource Corporation have formalized a Memorandum of Understanding to establish what they are calling the Exascale Foundry, a closed-loop system designed to bring AI-enabled manufacturing qualification and autonomous production to U.S. national security applications.
The partnership pairs ORNL’s computational muscle and advanced manufacturing infrastructure with ARC’s ARCNet distributed production platform, creating an integrated pipeline from materials simulation to finished parts.
“The United States faces an urgent need to rebuild its manufacturing capacity for critical defense components,” said Bryan Wisk, CEO of ARC. “By combining ORNL’s world-leading computational, materials science, and manufacturing capabilities with our autonomous production infrastructure, we can compress manufacturing and qualification timelines from years to months and deliver manufactured parts at the volumes the warfighter needs.”
New Partnership
Under the agreement, ARC will deploy advanced manufacturing equipment across seven production nodes connected to ORNL through its secure ARCNet infrastructure. ORNL will contribute access to its high-performance computing resources for simulation-driven materials characterization, along with technologies developed at its Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, the Department of Energy’s only large-scale, open-access advanced manufacturing facility.
A key element of the integration is ORNL’s Peregrine AI software, which has analyzed over 1.9 million additive manufacturing layers and will be embedded into ARC’s production nodes for real-time adaptive control and quality assurance. The initial focus will be on high-temperature nickel superalloy turbine components for autonomous air vehicle engines, produced using metal binder jetting, targeting one of the more acute bottlenecks in the current U.S. defense supply chain.
“ORNL’s advanced manufacturing and computing capabilities are uniquely positioned to help accelerate the transition of laboratory-proven technologies into production-scale defense manufacturing,” said Moe Khaleel, ORNL associate laboratory director for National Security Sciences. “Partnering with ARC ensures we are transitioning our research into real production outcomes.”
Plugging Into a National Strategy
The Exascale Foundry also connects to a broader federal initiative. The partnership supports DOE’s Genesis Mission, a national program aimed at building the world’s most powerful scientific platform to advance discovery, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation. For ORNL, the collaboration represents a deliberate move to bridge the gap between research capability and real production outcomes.
“This partnership exemplifies the type of relationship necessary to build and grow domestic supply chains for our national security,” said ORNL Chief Manufacturing Officer Craig Blue.
AI-Driven Qualification Is Now Central to Defense Manufacturing Strategy
The core problem the Exascale Foundry is designed to solve is not printing, it is proving. At the AMUG 2025 Conference, Department of War officials highlighted bottlenecks in material qualification, digital workflow standardization, and throughput as the key limits preventing widespread use of additive manufacturing in mission-critical systems.
The response from both the government and industry has been concrete. The DoD’s FY 2026 budget allocates $3.3 billion to projects involving additive manufacturing. an 83% increase from the $1.8 billion approved in FY 2025, with key initiatives including JAMA, now in phases I through IV, which aims to establish standards for qualifying 3D printed parts across the defense industrial base.
On the AI side specifically, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Manufacturing Technology Program (OSD ManTech) funded a dedicated program to develop an AI framework that models relationships between process parameters, material structure, and properties, targeting the conservative physical testing practices that have long slowed qualification cycles.
Elsewhere, Hadrian Additive launched a dedicated division focused on delivering production-ready, scalable additive manufacturing to U.S. defense, embedding certification, repeatability, and sustained throughput directly into its factory ecosystem.
The Exascale Foundry sits at the intersection of all of these forces: it runs simulation, production, and qualification in parallel, turning the industry’s most persistent bottleneck into the problem it solves first.
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
To stay up to date with the latest 3D printing news, don’t forget to subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.
Explore the full Future of 3D Printing and Executive Survey series from 3D Printing Industry, featuring perspectives from CEOs, engineers, and industry leaders on the industrialization of additive manufacturing, 3D printing industry trends 2026, qualification, supply chains, and additive manufacturing industry analysis.
Featured image shows ORNL Facility. Image via ORNL.
