Predictive understanding of Earth’s climate is of deep scientific interest and of great social relevance. A large multidisciplinary team of Earth system science domain experts, computational scientists, and software engineers is tackling the development of a next-generation Earth system model with fundamental scientific advances in all of its component models. Science advances include the introduction of predictive human system components, high‐resolution atmosphere with advanced cloud and aerosol parameterizations, coupled thermal‐hydrology‐biogeochemistry in the land subsurface and advanced disturbance dynamics for vegetation. The new model is designed to answer several pressing climate prediction science questions. This work supports the first year of compute resources needed to carry out the high-risk, high‐payoff development, parameterization, and coupled system evaluation tasks required to move the project toward delivery of this new modeling system.