OpenAI Opens Free GPT-Rosalind Access to U.S. University Labs With New Rosalind Academic Plan
Approved U.S. university labs can get up to 30 free ChatGPT Business seats for 12 months plus access to GPT-Rosalind, OpenAI’s life sciences model, after a trusted-access and biosafety review. No API credits are included.
By 1EyeAI Desk ·
OpenAI opened applications on Oct. 15, 2026 for the Rosalind Academic Plan. According to OpenAI’s Help Center, approved labs at U.S. universities get up to 30 ChatGPT Business Standard seats at no cost for 12 months, plus access to GPT-Rosalind, OpenAI’s model built for life sciences research. The seats include ChatGPT and Codex, subject to their normal usage limits. A payment card is required at setup, and the plan includes no API access or API credits.
A principal investigator or designated lab lead applies on behalf of the lab, verifies an institutional email address, and describes the institution, the lab, who needs access and the intended research use. Applicants must also name a trained biosafety contact at their institution. OpenAI says Persona verifies the university and the lab lead’s identity, and that a university email or existing subscription does not guarantee approval. Every member must use the same institutional email domain as the PI, so collaborators from other schools can’t be added. Labs outside the U.S., unaffiliated researchers and companies aren’t eligible, and Zero Data Retention isn’t offered under the plan.
OpenAI’s Rosalind page describes GPT-Rosalind as working through Rosalind Workbench, which is in research preview, and inside Codex. The page claims per-token performance gains on OpenAI’s own benchmarks, such as 53.7% on “Genebench”; those are company figures, not independent results. Unite.AI reports that OpenAI’s announcement names early academic users at UCSF and at Stanford and the Arc Institute, and that OpenAI notes its published example comparisons do not verify scientific correctness.
What this means for you: If you lead a life sciences lab at a U.S. university, you can apply now; check whether your school requires you to go through an existing institutional OpenAI agreement first. Everyone else: nothing changes in consumer ChatGPT today.