For scientists, the challenge isn’t access to knowledge but the overwhelming task of finding, interpreting, and connecting it. Breakthroughs happen at the edge of what’s known, yet researchers spend most of their time just finding the edges instead of pushing past them.

Consensus⁠(opens in a new window), a research assistant used by more than 8 million people, was built to change that. Founded by Christian Salem and Eric Olson, the platform searches, reads, and synthesizes peer-reviewed literature across more than 220 million papers. Its newest capability, Scholar Agent, is a multi-agent system built on GPT‑5 and the Responses API. It mirrors how researchers actually work, helping them get from question to conclusion in minutes instead of weeks.

But the goal isn’t just faster research—it’s a faster path to discovery. “Science advances when it’s more accessible,” Salem says. “Our job is to give researchers everywhere the ability to find, trust, and act on evidence.”

The first version of Consensus worked like a vertical search engine for science: it indexed academic papers, retrieved relevant results, and generated summaries grounded in citations. But search alone wasn’t enough.