The launch of the White House’s Genesis Mission represents a bold federal effort to leverage artificial intelligence for scientific discovery, national competitiveness and economic growth. Announced in November 2025 via executive order, the Genesis Mission aims to create an integrated experimentation platform by linking federal datasets, high-performance computing and public-private partnerships to accelerate AI-driven breakthroughs across biotechnology, energy, semiconductors and more.
As this national initiative unfolds, questions about equitable access, anti-competitive risk and inclusive governance have emerged from both industry and policy communities. Ensuring that smaller players—startups, academic labs and emerging innovators—have a fair seat at the table is not just an ethical imperative but a strategic one if the United States wants sustained innovation and economic vibrancy.
Members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank—experts in machine learning, enterprise AI and AI strategy—offer frameworks and strategies that federal leaders can adopt to prevent the Genesis Mission from becoming a vehicle that reinforces incumbent dominance rather than broad-based innovation.
Tiered Access and Transparent Compute Allocation
To ensure the Genesis Mission accelerates innovation without disadvantaging smaller industry players, Egbert von Frankenberg, CEO of Knightfox App Design Ltd., emphasizes that federal compute and data must be offered through “clear, tiered access with ring-fenced capacity and subsidies for startups, universities, nonprofits and underserved communities” while also stressing that partnership agreements need to explicitly protect smaller companies’ intellectual property: “Partnership templates should protect small-company IP (they keep the rights to their models and code) while the government retains open, non-exclusive rights to publicly funded results, and should ban exclusivity, MFN clauses and restrictive NDAs.”
This, along with capping vendor share, including antitrust reviews and ensuring governance involves open source seats and the publication of usage/outcome dashboards, is all key to ensuring the Genesis Mission “bakes in competition, access and transparency from day one,” says von Frankenberg.
“Smaller players must be co-architects, not ‘community observers,’ in governance councils that set standards for safety, interoperability and data use.”
Open Standards, Shared Testbeds and Inclusive Governance
Sandesh Gawali, Senior Director of Data and AI Products at Salesforce, believes the Genesis Mission can only succeed if AI growth is a positive-sum game rather than a power grab. He advocates for “open, shared testbeds; transparent grant criteria; and tiered access to compute and federal pilots so a startup can stand next to a hyperscaler, not behind it.”
Gawali underscores that smaller players must have real influence too: “Smaller players must be co-architects, not ‘community observers,’ in governance councils that set standards for safety, interoperability and data use.”
He also stresses the need for clear intellectual property frameworks: “We need clear IP, open-licensing options and procurement set-asides to ensure public-private partnership doesn’t quietly turn into publicly funded concentration.”
Assurance First: Uniform Trust and Evaluation Standards
For Prashant Kondle, Digital/AI Transformation Specialist at Ivis Technologies, success under the Genesis Mission depends on structured, discipline-based collaboration and risk management across partners.
He proposes the implementation of an “Assurance Pack,” adding that “a mandatory Assurance Pack—provenance, evaluation rigor, risk logs, red-team evidence—creates a uniform trust bar so SMEs compete on reliability, not compute.”
He affirms that this assurance-first framework brings “structure, transparency and common risk language to every collaboration, ensuring that innovation scales without concentrating power.”
Open Models and Small Business Compute Tracks
Pradeep Kumar Muthukamatchi, Principal Cloud Architect for Microsoft, points to open-weight models and dedicated compute tracks as critical tools for democratizing the Genesis Mission. An open-weight model release—where core model weights are openly available—can help smaller companies skip massive pre-training costs and focus on building applications and niches.
He also emphasizes that compute access must be more than symbolic: “A substantial portion of the Mission’s advanced supercomputing resources must be ring-fenced for a dedicated Accelerated Small Business Compute Track, providing essential hardware access to SMEs and university teams via streamlined grants.”
Muthukamatchi also champions preferential API access and attribution for data contributors: “Any smaller data contributors must be granted preferential access to the resultant model APIs and receive clear attribution.”
This approach of combining openness with targeted compute support ensures that smaller labs and startups can build competitive, differentiated offerings without being sidelined.
“Expanding Other Transaction Authority contracts would allow agile procurement for disruptors, ensuring the initiative accelerates the entire ecosystem, not just incumbents.”
Compute Credits, Federated Learning and Agile Procurement
Sathish Anumula, Sr. Customer Success Manager and Architect for IBM Corporation, highlights that the Genesis Mission’s structure must actively guard against technology monopolies by major cloud and compute providers. Among his recommended safeguards are “compute credits” specifically reserved for startups, ensuring early access to powerful resources regardless of scale, as well as federated learning agreements that protect SME IP.
To break up rigid procurement cycles and exclusivity, Anumula recommends expanding the use of Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contracts—flexible, rapid procurement vehicles often used in defense and innovation contexts.
He explains: “Expanding Other Transaction Authority contracts would allow agile procurement for disruptors, ensuring the initiative accelerates the entire ecosystem, not just incumbents.”
“The Genesis Mission must demonstrate that innovation is not inherited by those with the most infrastructure but earned by those with the clearest vision.”
Innovation for All: Vision and Governance Integrity
Aditya Vikram Kashyap, Vice President of Firmwide Innovation at Morgan Stanley, frames the debate around the Genesis Mission as a choice between inherited privilege and earned innovation. He insists that compute, data and funds must be explicitly reserved for emerging labs and startups, not just incumbent giants.
He states: “The Genesis Mission must demonstrate that innovation is not inherited by those with the most infrastructure but earned by those with the clearest vision.”
Kashyap also champions AI fact-sheets—clear, standardized disclosures of purpose and risk—so that transparency is baked into any initiative’s deployment phase. On governance, he insists that smaller players and independent experts must be part of decision-making to prevent capture.
“Technological progress is only ethical when power expands possibility,” he says. “The future of AI should be shaped by those who imagine it—not merely those who already command it.”
Portable Sovereignty and Zero-Knowledge Infrastructure
Bhubalan Mani, Lead for Supply Chain Technology and Analytics at GARMIN, offers a distinctive approach to preventing incumbent lock-in: building “Zero-Knowledge Infrastructure” and “Portable Sovereignty” guarantees.
Zero-Knowledge Infrastructure ensures that compute providers cannot see proprietary workloads, mitigating risks of inadvertent competitive leaks. Likewise, a “Right to Replicate” clause would allow creators to take their models and workloads to any hardware environment, ensuring true independence.
“Real success isn’t just onboarding startups,” Mani says. “It is ensuring they can leave with their IP intact, fully independent and technically unencumbered.
Equitable Access, Open IP and Independent Oversight
Dileep Rai, Manager of Oracle Cloud Technology at Hachette Book Group (HBG), advocates a structured three-part framework to prevent exclusionary outcomes under the Genesis Mission: equitable access, transparent governance and non-exclusive IP.
He explains: “The most vital safeguard is mandating that all federally funded AI models and datasets be made open source and publicly available with permissive licenses. This dramatically lowers the entry barrier for smaller players.”
Rai also calls for “reserved grant funding and streamlined contract channels specifically for SMBs and academia” and an “independent oversight board” to ensure fair allocation and prevent discrimination.
“This fosters decentralized, broad-based innovation,” he says.
Comprehensive Standards, Antitrust Compliance and Equal Opportunity
Chandrakanth Lekkala, Principal Data Engineer at Narwal.ai, outlines a suite of structural and policy safeguards to prevent dominance by behemoths:
• Transparent data-sharing protocols that eliminate proprietary advantages.
• Open competition requiring equal access for all entities regardless of size.
• Equitable funding mechanisms that go beyond large corporate partnerships.
• Independent oversight to prevent conflicts of interest.
• Antitrust compliance monitoring and public reporting.
“Without these protections,” Lekkala says, “concentration risks threaten to entrench dominant players while excluding innovative smaller competitors from research opportunities.”
Key Points for Policymakers to Consider
- Tiered compute access is nonnegotiable. The mission should establish tiered access and subsidies so startups, nonprofits and universities can compete alongside hyperscalers.
- Open standards and transparent governance create trust. Shared testbeds and open licensing frameworks lower barriers and prevent concentration of advantages.
- Assurance Packs standardize evaluation. The mission should implement uniform, evidence-based documentation across partners so smaller firms compete on reliability and trust.
- Open-weight models democratize innovation. Mandated open model releases and ring-fenced compute tracks reduce cost barriers for emerging innovators.
- Flexible procurement expands inclusion. Use agile contracting vehicles like Other Transaction Authority to give disruptors a real chance in federal partnerships.
- Fact sheets and inclusive governance prevent capture. Transparent risk disclosures and governance inclusion of smaller players keep policy aligned with broader innovation.
- Zero-Knowledge and Portable Sovereignty protect IP. Infrastructure guarantees and portability ensure SMEs keep ownership and freedom to innovate independently.
- Equitable access requires open data and oversight. Open-source models and independent oversight boards prevent discriminatory allocation of federal AI resources.
- Competition safeguards prevent entrenchment. Robust antitrust track mechanisms and public reporting ensure fair competition and deter dominance by incumbents.
Ensuring Genesis Becomes a Catalyst, Not a Gatekeeper
The White House’s Genesis Mission represents a historic commitment to accelerating AI-driven innovation and scientific discovery. But its success will depend on how well its design and implementation anticipate risks of incumbent lock-in, skewed access and competitive imbalance. The Senior Executive AI Think Tank makes clear that innovation accelerates fastest when competition thrives and opportunities are broadly distributed.
By embedding tiered access, open standards, transparent governance, IP protections and competition safeguards into the Genesis Mission’s frameworks, policymakers can ensure that this federal initiative catalyzes a new era of AI innovation that benefits incumbents, startups, academia and small business alike.
