OpenAI offers U.S. university labs free GPT-Rosalind access OpenAI

OpenAI has launched the Rosalind Academic Plan for academic labs at U.S. universities. Eligible labs can get up to 30 ChatGPT Business Standard seats at no cost for up to 12 months. They also get access to GPT-Rosalind, OpenAI's life sciences model, after a trusted-access review. A principal investigator (PI) or lab lead applies on behalf of the lab.

OpenAI announced the plan on October 15, 2026. It calls GPT-Rosalind its "dedicated life sciences model". The model works with Rosalind Workbench, an environment in the ChatGPT app that connects scientific tools across medicinal chemistry, genomics, wet-lab assistance and other areas. The offer is open only to U.S. university labs for now. OpenAI says it plans to expand to other countries in the future.

What it is

• Seats: up to 30 Business Standard seats at $0 per user per month, for up to 12 months. The maximum is 30 seats in one workspace.
• Models: access to all commercially available frontier OpenAI models, subject to plan usage limits. Each seat includes ChatGPT and Codex.
• GPT-Rosalind: available after trusted-access approval. The PI or lab lead turns it on for up to 30 named members.
• Rosalind Workbench: a research preview in the ChatGPT app. Its starter tasks cover protein design, small-molecule design, safety and developability, structure and sequence, genomics and pathology, and experimental validation.
• Data: research data shared through the plan is not used to train OpenAI models by default. Zero Data Retention is not available under this offer.
• Not included: API access.

How to apply

1. Labs at universities without an OpenAI Enterprise agreement use the academic lab application. Labs at universities with an Enterprise agreement apply through their university's Enterprise access process.
2. Sign in with the ChatGPT account linked to your institutional .edu email.
3. Give details on the institution, lab, role and intended research use, and name a trained biosafety contact at your institution.
4. Complete identity verification. OpenAI uses Persona to verify the university and the PI or lab lead.
5. After approval, accept the offer and set up the workspace. A payment card is required during setup.
6. Add lab members and turn on their GPT-Rosalind access. All members must use institutional emails with the same domain as the PI or lab lead.

Individual, unaffiliated researchers and commercial organizations are not eligible.

Sources

• OpenAI: Bringing GPT-Rosalind to academic research labs
• OpenAI Help Center: Rosalind Academic Plan
• OpenAI Developers: Meet Rosalind Workbench