AI is accelerating progress across biology and the life sciences, creating new opportunities to advance scientific discovery, strengthen public health, and build resilience against biological threats. As these capabilities grow more powerful, the institutions working to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats need equally powerful tools. OpenAI believes frontier AI should meaningfully advantage those defenders-and that doing so requires responsible deployment structures and trusted access models that put advanced capabilities in the hands of vetted partners building new biodefense applications, tools, and initiatives to bolster societal resilience.
To that end, OpenAI is announcing two new steps to advance defensive acceleration in biology:
- Launching Rosalind Biodefense to help trusted developers build new biodefense and pandemic preparedness capabilities.
- Expanding trusted access to GPT‑Rosalind for select U.S. government and allied partners supporting public health and biodefense missions.
These steps are part of a broader strategy to ensure advanced AI meaningfully advantages those working to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats. That strategy includes equipping defenders through trusted access to advanced AI tools, accelerating the development of medical countermeasures, building earlier warning systems, strengthening diagnostics, preparedness, and response capabilities, and supporting a robust evaluations ecosystem. OpenAI plans to share more about this work across these areas in the coming weeks.
Building on OpenAI's Safety and Resilience Work
As AI models become more capable in biology, OpenAI has been working to ensure those capabilities are deployed in ways that advance science while strengthening safeguards. The approach has focused on building layered resilience: investing in preparedness evaluations, bio-specific capability assessments, safer model behavior for dual-use biological requests, monitoring and enforcement, expert red teaming, and security controls for higher-risk capabilities.
In July 2025, OpenAI released ChatGPT agent, the first model treated as High Capability in biology under the Preparedness Framework, and activated robust safeguards to minimize the risk of harm. Since then, OpenAI has continued refining those safeguards and sharing detailed assessments as capabilities have advanced. The company has also continued working closely with external testing groups on pre-deployment evaluations, whose findings help validate and inform the approach.
OpenAI has also worked closely with external experts and public-sector partners to strengthen the broader biosecurity ecosystem, including expert biologists, government organizations like the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) and the UK AI Security Institute (UK AISI), Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Frontier Model Forum. This announcement builds on that work by expanding how trusted partners can use GPT‑Rosalind for high-impact defensive applications-both by supporting defenders building new countermeasures and by extending trusted access to government partners with public-health and biodefense missions.
Supporting Defensive Acceleration with Rosalind Biodefense
Defensive acceleration focuses on making sure frontier AI capabilities meaningfully advantage the people building society's defenses. To help trusted developers turn frontier capabilities into practical defenses, OpenAI is launching Rosalind Biodefense, a new initiative to enable the development of high-impact defensive applications of AI in the life sciences leveraging GPT‑Rosalind, OpenAI's frontier reasoning model built for life sciences research.
This program helps trusted developers apply frontier AI capabilities to operationalized biodefense tools that can strengthen preparedness before the next biological threat emerges. OpenAI will sponsor access to GPT‑Rosalind and provide launch support to trusted developers building frontier biosecurity applications that can bolster societal defenses and build pandemic preparedness. This includes work across areas such as epidemiological modeling, early detection, screening, preparedness, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), and other public-health-relevant capabilities.
At launch, OpenAI is supporting a first set of organizations building frontier applications across the biological defense stack with GPT‑Rosalind. Their work spans the lifecycle of biological threats-from prevention and early detection to societal resilience and medical countermeasure development-and helps demonstrate how frontier AI can support public-health teams, researchers, infrastructure operators, and communities in preparing for future biological risks, whether naturally occurring or synthetic.
Among the initial partners:
- Fourth Eon Biosecurity builds adaptive screening infrastructure that can evolve alongside new technologies like AI. Starting with function-based screening for DNA synthesis, the organization helps labs and companies that handle biological materials prevent unsafe or malicious orders, including those involving novel designs.
- SecureDNA, SecureBio Detection, and ProEquip are also part of the initial cohort.
OpenAI's goal is not only to accelerate life sciences research in the abstract, but to help create products and interventions that bolster societal resilience and demonstrate what responsible, high-impact biodefense can look like in practice. The company is especially interested in projects where advanced AI can materially improve the speed, quality, or scale of defensive research workflows, including literature synthesis, protocol design support, model-building, data harmonization, simulation, decision support, and scientific communication. Applications are welcome from academic, nonprofit, government-affiliated, mission-driven companies, and other qualified research teams working on projects with clear public benefit.
Working with Government Partners to Strengthen Biodefense
Strengthening biological preparedness requires a broad ecosystem of defenders. In addition to supporting trusted builders developing new defensive applications, OpenAI is also expanding access to the public institutions that play a central role in preventing, detecting, and responding to biological threats. The company is extending trusted access to GPT‑Rosalind for select U.S. government and allied partners with approved public health and biodefense missions, so qualified teams can apply frontier AI to high-impact workflows like early warning systems, outbreak response planning, diagnostics, preparedness, and medical countermeasure development.
Government public health and research institutions play an essential role in protecting communities, translating scientific evidence into action, and preparing for emerging biological challenges. By expanding access through a trusted access model, OpenAI can help qualified teams use GPT‑Rosalind for clearly beneficial defensive work while maintaining the safety, security, and accountability controls appropriate for advanced biological capabilities.
This expansion reflects OpenAI's broader approach: advancing access to powerful tools in step with appropriate safeguards, while investing in the resilience of the wider ecosystem. Strong societal preparedness depends on collaboration across government, research institutions, industry, and technology providers.
Notable government and institutional partners include:
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which is applying AI to advance biopreparedness and bioresilience by integrating AI, supercomputing, advanced simulation, and laboratory testing to support the design and evaluation of potential medical countermeasures for emerging biological threats.
- Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which intends to integrate GPT‑Rosalind into a protein-engineering platform to accelerate screening of mutant enzymes for therapeutics, countermeasure development, and emerging biothreat characterization.
- Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is focused on its 100 Days Mission to accelerate the development of vaccines against epidemic and pandemic threats, including the current Ebola outbreak.
Looking Ahead
This announcement is an early step in a broader effort to use GPT‑Rosalind to strengthen public health, biodefense, and life sciences research. The Rosalind Biodefense Program is open to qualified applicants globally, and OpenAI is looking to support more organizations building defensive applications that can use GPT‑Rosalind to improve societal resilience.
OpenAI also expects to continue expanding how trusted government partners can engage with GPT‑Rosalind over time. As the company learns from this initial set of deployments and continues conversations with partners in the U.S. and abroad, it will continue refining the access pathways, support models, and safeguards needed to help qualified institutions use frontier life sciences AI responsibly.