Digital Science, a UK research technology company, has acquired Jenni AI, an AI-based research and writing platform that says it has more than 8 million users in 189 countries. Digital Science announced the deal from London on October 29, 2026.
The companies did not disclose financial terms, Research Information reported. Jenni AI will continue as a standalone product under its own name, with the same team, pricing and subscription plans, according to Digital Science.
Over the coming months Jenni AI will begin drawing on Digital Science's research data, starting with Dimensions, a database of 171 million research publications, and will use its full-text search. The aim is to make sure the sources Jenni users find and cite are grounded in published research.
What Jenni AI built
Jenni AI was founded in 2020 by David Park and Henry Mao. It is built for academic writing: users can upload papers or import their reference libraries, explore sources, draft and refine text, and check citations against the original material.
The company pitches itself as a research-focused alternative to general-purpose AI chatbots, which can produce references to papers that do not exist. Tech.eu reported that the platform is used mainly by students and researchers, and that the deal gives Digital Science more direct relationships with PhD and master's students.
That positioning matters in academic work, where an invented or misattributed reference can undermine a thesis or paper. Jenni's own citation checker compares what a user cites with the source material the user has supplied; the Dimensions link is meant to extend that check to the wider body of published research.
Park, Jenni AI's chief executive, said the company was started on the belief that the future would be written with AI rather than by it, and that the team built Jenni to help researchers follow their curiosity and publish good work.
“What they can't get from a general-purpose tool is a citation that has been checked against the actual paper.”
Why Digital Science is buying
Digital Science provides data, tools and infrastructure to researchers, publishers, funders and institutions. Its brands include Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, metaphacts, Overleaf, Papers AI, ReadCube, Symplectic and Writefull.
Jenni AI joins three other research writing and reading tools in that portfolio: Overleaf, the collaborative LaTeX editor; ReadCube, an AI-assisted reference manager; and Papers AI, which combines data, analysis and writing.
Stephen Leicht, Digital Science's chief executive, framed the purchase around citation accuracy. He said researchers already use AI routinely, but that a general-purpose tool cannot give them a citation that has been checked against the actual paper. Research Information reported that Leicht welcomed David, Marc, Shailesh and the rest of the Jenni AI team.
The disclosure problem in research
Digital Science pointed to a September 2026 Oxford University Press survey of more than 2,600 researchers to show how unsettled the use of AI in academic writing remains. In that survey, 74% of researchers said they were unsure which uses of AI they should disclose, and 48% said they had not fully disclosed their own AI use.
Digital Science said linking Jenni to Dimensions is intended to address part of that problem by tying the material researchers cite back to the published record. The company has not given a date for when the integration will be complete beyond saying the work will happen over the coming months.
Tech.eu reported that the integration will use Dimensions' full-text search to help researchers find, understand and cite the literature in their field, rather than relying on what a general-purpose model remembers from its training data.
What happens to users
For now, Jenni AI's users should see no change to their accounts. Digital Science said the product keeps its name, team, pricing and plans. New features based on Dimensions data and full-text search are expected to arrive gradually.
Digital Science did not say how many people work at Jenni AI or how much the company had raised before the sale.
