OpenAI Economic Research Exchange 2026 – YOA

Deadline: July 5, 2026

Applications are open for the OpenAI Economic Research Exchange 2026. OpenAI’s Economic Research group research how AI is affecting staff, corporations, establishments, and the broader financial system. They do that by combining rigorous financial analysis with privateness-preserving evaluation of product and utilization knowledge, buyer and institutional partnerships, and collaboration with exterior researchers.

They are launching the OpenAI Economic Research Exchange to formalize and broaden their collaborations with exterior researchers. The Exchange will assist fastidiously scoped collaborations with researchers to supply excessive-high quality empirical analysis on the financial impacts of AI.

They are in search of initiatives that start with an essential financial query about AI, then make a transparent case for a way knowledge about the usage of OpenAI instruments can present a particular, empirical lens on that query whereas additionally preserving person privateness.

Benefits

Each chosen challenge will obtain:

• A one-time analysis grant for the principal investigator(s): $25,000
• A month-to-month RA stipend or contractor compensation: $7,500
• Access to authorized, privateness-secure product and utilization knowledge underneath NDA, topic to knowledge governance, privateness, authorized, and safety necessities.
• Defined inner assist path for challenge scoping, onboarding, knowledge approvals, evaluation, and dissemination.

Eligibility

• Open to researchers concerned about Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Funded initiatives should embrace clear intermediate milestones, not simply remaining papers. At a minimal, researchers might be anticipated to:
  • Define key milestones tied to the challenge timeline, resembling design lock, knowledge entry, interim evaluation, and draft output.
  • Complete onboarding, contracting, and authorized knowledge-entry steps earlier than evaluation begins.
  • Share intermediate findings with the OpenAI Economic Research group.
  • Participate in periodic analysis learn-outs or consortium discussions.
  • Produce at the least one written output, resembling a memo, working paper, draft publication, public temporary, benchmark, or dataset documentation.
  • Coordinate exterior communication or publication via the agreed OpenAI evaluation path.

Evaluation Criteria

Proposals might be evaluated primarily based on:

• Relevance to the Economic Research group’s precedence questions
• Methodological rigor and credibility
• Feasibility given challenge scope, knowledge, privateness, authorized, and timeline constraints (as an illustration: we is not going to underneath any circumstances be sharing dialog knowledge)
• Clarity of milestones and reporting plans
• Fit with the Exchange working mannequin, together with who will carry out the palms-on work
• Potential to contribute to credible exterior proof on the financial impacts of AI
• Potential to make use of authorized OpenAI knowledge in progressive, privateness-preserving methods

They will prioritize proposals from: 

• Researchers which have a previous observe report of publication within the analysis areas which they’re proposing
• Researchers which have entry to distinctive knowledge that may facilitate bold collaborations

Application

Each proposal ought to embrace:

• Research query(s) and motivation
• Fit with a number of Exchange precedence questions
• Proposed methodology and empirical technique
• Data wants, together with the precise authorized OpenAI software-use sign that may assist reply the broader AI query and the way the design would protect privateness
• Target timeline and key milestones
• Research group and proposed RA or visiting researcher profile
• Expected contributions to proof, inner studying, and authorized public communication
• Scope definition, together with express in-scope and out-of-scope analyses, outputs, geographies, and stakeholders
• Success standards, failure circumstances, dependencies, constraints, and useful resource commitments

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to OpenAI Economic Research Exchange.