Jefferson Lab Breaks Ground on $49M Data Center to Power DOE’s High Performance Data Hub
June 19, 2026
Jefferson Lab Breaks Ground on $49M Data Center to Power DOE’s High Performance Data Hub
The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, commonly known as Jefferson Lab, officially broke ground last Friday on a new 30,000-square-foot data center on its campus in Newport News, Virginia. The facility, backed by $49 million in funding, is designed to support the U.S. Department of Energy’s High Performance Data Facility (HPDF), a major data management infrastructure project awarded to the lab in October 2023.
The data center will feature a 10,000-square-foot data hall, with an additional 10,000 square feet dedicated to infrastructure equipment. It will serve as the foundational infrastructure for the Genesis Mission, a DOE-led initiative aimed at advancing artificial intelligence applications for science and energy. The project underscores the growing intersection of high-performance computing and nuclear physics research, as Jefferson Lab seeks to manage increasingly massive datasets generated by its experimental operations.
Funding for the facility comes primarily from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which committed $43.3 million to the project, supplemented by $6 million in seed funding. While the lab has not disclosed a specific construction timeline, the groundbreaking marks a critical step in expanding the region’s role as a hub for government-backed data infrastructure. Located in the Hampton Roads area of eastern Virginia, Newport News is strategically positioned to support DOE’s long-term computational and data storage needs.
The new data center is expected to play a pivotal role in enabling next-generation AI-driven research, particularly in fields like nuclear physics where data volumes are exploding. By housing the HPDF, the facility will provide the computational backbone for scientists to analyze experimental results and accelerate discoveries in fundamental science. The project also signals a broader trend of government agencies investing in dedicated, on-premise data infrastructure to support mission-critical AI and high-performance computing workloads.
Source: datacenterdynamics
