OpenAI is planning to provide 100,000 academic researchers with free, year-long access to its frontier AI models through 2027, according to an Axios report on the academic access program. The planned offering includes models from the GPT-5.6 family, including GPT-5.6 Sol Pro, and combines model access with business-grade privacy and security protections.
The initiative is notable not only for the scale of the planned access, but also for the governance terms attached to it. Researcher data will not be used to train OpenAI's models by default, according to the report. Participants will also be able to invite up to four collaborators from their institution, making the program relevant to research groups rather than only individual academics.
What OpenAI is planning
Axios reported that OpenAI expects the first 10,000 researchers to begin using the program this summer, followed by a wider rollout through 2027. The access is planned as a free, year-long allocation for academic researchers, rather than a conventional paid subscription offer.
The program sits within a broader external-research commitment. Axios reported that OpenAI intends to invest more than $250 million in external research through 2027. The academic access effort creates a direct channel for researchers to work with the company's most advanced models while retaining a stated default boundary around training use of their data.
