SLAC Wins DOE Funding for SPIRE Autonomous AI-Driven Laboratory

On October 8 the US Department of Energy selected SLAC for funding under a $30 million national initiative. The SPIRE project will link LCLS and SSRL detectors, beam controls and robotics into a single autonomous workflow run by AI agents. LCLS-II produces up to one million X-ray pulses per second and over one terabyte of data per second.

• DOE picked SLAC for funding under a $30 million initiative
• LCLS-II fires up to 1 million pulses per second and over 1 TB/s of data
• AI decision-making is embedded directly in detector chips
• SPIRE robots will handle fragile samples using tactile sensors