OpenAI gives 100,000 scientists free AI, and shows how

OpenAI made two announcements this week that look unrelated. One is generous. The other explains how it can afford to be.

The generous one: OpenAI is giving 100,000 academic researchers free access to its frontier models through 2027, Axios reported. The programme, ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, starts with 10,000 users this summer and scales from there.

Free frontier access for scientists

Researchers get GPT-5.6 Sol Pro, OpenAI’s top model, and can each invite up to four collaborators, the company said. Their data is not used to train models by default. Early institutions include the Institute for Advanced Study and the École normale supérieure.

OpenAI frames it as accelerating science, and it forms part of a commitment of more than $250m through 2027 to fund outside research. Greg Brockman called it “more shots on goal against humanity’s hardest problems.”