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.…