OpenAI has opened applications for a free AI program that will give up to 100,000 academic researchers access to ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, Codex and its frontier models through 2027. The program, ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, will begin with 10,000 scientists, mathematicians and engineers this summer, with access already available at the Institute for Advanced Study and École normale supérieure. The offer forms part of an OpenAI commitment of more than $250 million through 2027 to support external scientific research and discovery. Applicants must work at selected, recognized degree-granting colleges or universities with a high level of research activity, and approved participants can invite up to four collaborators from the same institution. Participants will receive access to OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 family, including GPT-5.6 Sol Pro at launch, alongside expanded deep research, higher usage limits and larger context windows. More than 75 life science skills will be available, and each workspace will include business-grade privacy and security protections, with participants’ research data not used to train its models by default.