Caltech hosts first math research hackathon: 40 hours, $2M compute, open conjectures
_sathvikr · x · 2026-09-05
Caltech will host Mathathon on October 30–November 1, 2026, billed as the first hackathon devoted to research-level mathematics, co-hosted with Anthropic and OpenAI and backed by DARPA expMath, Cognition, a16z, Y Combinator and dozens of other sponsors.
- 100 teams get frontier models for 40 hours to attack open conjectures or build new theory, then defend results before leading mathematicians; prizes come in two rounds, before and after community verification.
- Organizers cite recent AI breakthroughs in pure math: disproving Erdős's 80-year-old planar unit-distance conjecture (May 2026), the first explicit non-sofic group (open 27 years), and a claimed complex structure on the six-sphere (open 78 years, unverified).
- Core questions: how much can AI compress ideation-to-publication, and what is a mathematician's role when AI solves conjectures faster?
Applications are open via the event site.
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