Exclusive: OpenAI wants to be a scientific research partner

AXIOS January 26, 2026
Ashley Gold

AI is increasingly being used as a research collaborator for mathematicians and scientists, per a new report from OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios.

Why it matters: OpenAI argues that AI can make scientists more productive by upping the amount of research that can get done, ultimately leading to more life-saving breakthroughs.

By the numbers: Per OpenAI’s report, an internal analysis of a random sample of anonymized ChatGPT conversations from January to December of last year showed:

• Average weekly message counts on “advanced hard-science topics” grew nearly 47% over the year.
• As of January of this year, nearly 1.3 million weekly users are discussing “advanced topics in hard science” with an average of 8.4 million ChatGPT messages on those topics.
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