Data story · Counted 12 November 2026

The word "ChatGPT" peaked in National Science Foundation awards in 2024. "Artificial intelligence" kept rising.

The National Science Foundation's public award search lists 33 new awards made in 2023 whose title or abstract says "ChatGPT", 42 in 2024, 23 in 2025 and 9 so far in 2026.[1] A word in an abstract is not a measure of the work.

Bar chart of new National Science Foundation awards whose title or abstract says ChatGPT, by year of award: 2022 0, 2023 33, 2024 42, 2025 23, 2026 9 (2026 so far). — New awards whose title or abstract says "ChatGPT", by calendar year of award.[1] Data: awards-by-year.csv.

2,697

awards made so far in 2026 are returned by the same search for "artificial intelligence", already more than the 1,768 of all 2025.[1] The word peaked and faded. The AI did not.

Bar chart of new National Science Foundation awards that say artificial intelligence, by year of award: 2021 857, 2022 959, 2023 1,072, 2024 1,458, 2025 1,768, 2026 2,697 (2026 so far). — New awards the search returns for "artificial intelligence", by calendar year of award.[1] Data: awards-by-year.csv.

One letter changes the count

For awards made in 2025 the search returns 51 for "large language model" and 237 for "large language models": 4.6 times the count for one added letter. In 2024 it was 53 and 180.[1]

Every abstract that says "large language models" also contains the letters "large language model". A search that matched text inside words would return at least 237 for the singular. It returned 51. So this search matches whole words as typed, and the singular misses the plural. The API's own page does not say how plurals are matched; the two counts do.[2]

By year

New National Science Foundation awards returned for each phrase, by calendar year of award[1]
Year of award	"ChatGPT"	"artificial intelligence"	"large language model"	"large language models"
2021	0	857	0	0
2022	0	959	0	4
2023	33	1,072	7	68
2024	42	1,458	53	180
2025	23	1,768	51	237
2026, so far	9	2,697	83	184

Data: awards-by-year.csv

How it was counted

One search per phrase and year on the National Science Foundation's public Award Search API: the phrase as the keyword, award dates from 1 January to 31 December of the year. The count is the API's own total for that search.[1]
The "ChatGPT" awards were also fetched one month at a time and read: the monthly counts add up to each year's total, no award appears twice, and each of the 107 awards from 2023 to 2026 has the word in its title or abstract.
The other three phrases were counted, not read award by award.

Limits

A word in a title or abstract is not a measure of the work. Some awards mention ChatGPT in passing, and work on the same tools may be described in other words.
2026 is not over. Counts are by award date and can still move for earlier years as records are corrected.
Awards of one agency. Nothing here counts what other agencies fund.
The search matches whole words as typed, so every count on this page belongs to its exact phrase.

More on the federal AI picture: 2,897 federal grants mention AI in fiscal 2025 · 373 federal contracts mention AI in fiscal 2026 · 3,611 uses of AI on the federal list.

Sources

National Science Foundation, Award Search API: the total count of awards for each keyword and range of award dates, and the award list for "chatgpt". Counted by this site. Read 12 November 2026.
National Science Foundation, Award Search API, version 1, description of the request fields. Read 11 November 2026.