OpenAI to provide free AI models to academic researchers
OpenAI launches the 'ChatGPT for Academic Researchers' program, offering free access to its AI models to 100,000 scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by 2027.
OpenAI has announced a new initiative called 'ChatGPT for Academic Researchers' that will provide free access to the company's AI models to 100,000 researchers, mathematicians, and engineers from select academic institutions. Participants will receive hands-on support from OpenAI, access to the latest GPT-5.6 Sol Pro model, and the ability to invite four collaborators from their institution.
The program will launch this summer with 10,000 participants and expand to 100,000 by 2027. OpenAI says this is part of a commitment of more than $250 million through 2027 to support external scientific research and discovery.
The company notes that researchers already use AI models for data analysis and grant writing; this formalizes the relationship. By default, researchers' data will not be used to train models, OpenAI emphasized.
This is not the first time OpenAI has courted researchers. In January, it introduced Prism, an AI-powered tool for working with scientific journals and documents. Prism is available to anyone with a ChatGPT account and can help verify citations and formatting.
