OpenAI launches free AI access for 100,000 researchers

OpenAI has launched a new initiative providing free access to its most advanced artificial intelligence models for up to 100,000 academic researchers, a program the company describes as a major investment in accelerating scientific discovery. The "ChatGPT for Academic Researchers" program opened for applications on July 30, 2026, and will begin onboarding its first 10,000 participants this summer at selected institutions, with plans to scale to the full 100,000 through 2027.

The program offers qualified faculty and postdoctoral scientists free use of OpenAI's frontier models, including the flagship GPT-5.6 Sol Pro, which is optimized for complex queries and long-running tasks. Participants will also receive access to ChatGPT Work and Codex, along with higher usage limits, larger context windows, and an expanded version of the deep research feature that can gather information from hundreds of sources. Each approved researcher can invite up to four collaborators from their institution to join, and OpenAI states that, by default, participant data will not be used to train its models.

In a statement, the company framed the initiative as part of a broader commitment exceeding $250...