Openai said Monday it is supporting a new consortium called Nextgenai, which focuses on supporting AI-assisted research at top universities.
Nextgenai, which includes 15 founding academic partners, including Harvard, Oxford University and MIT, will be funded by $50 million in research grants, computing funds and API access from Openai, the company said. Students, educators and researchers are eligible to receive awards that will be awarded over the coming months.
“This initiative is built not only to promote discovery for the next generation, but also to prepare the next generation to shape the future of AI,” Openai wrote in a blog post. “Nextgenai is designed to explore opportunities for scientists looking for treatments, academics revealing new insights, and students learning world AI that they learn from this initiative to expand their reach and impact.”
The consortium, which Openai stands as an expanded commitment to education, comes at a time of unstable AI research grants in the US following the launch of the university’s ChatGPT EDU product in May last year
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has reportedly fired many of its National Science Foundation employees, who have been hand-selected for AI expertise, threatening the agency’s ability to maintain key AI work.
NextGenai helps you get the most important work done with AI. However, Openai is not a neutral party for AI spaces. Startups expect researchers, faculty and students to be accustomed to providing AI at the expense of tools from their rivals, including open source alternatives.