Caltech Mathathon: 100 teams, 40 hours, $2M AI credits to attack open math problems
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-09-07
Sathvik Redrouthu's team, with Anthropic and OpenAI, will host the Caltech Mathathon on Oct 30–Nov 1 at Caltech — billed as the first hackathon ever devoted to research-level mathematics. 100 top teams recruited worldwide will get 40 hours and $2M+ in compute (including $1M in Fable API credits and $1M in Astra API credits) to solve, understand and present an open problem of their choice.
The candidate pool includes 10 IMO/IOI medalists, researchers with 15+ Annals papers, authors of 5 textbooks, and mathematicians who have solved famous open problems.
The backdrop is AI's recent run in pure math: May saw Erdős's planar unit-distance conjecture (open 80 years) disproved; August brought the first explicit non-sofic group (open 27 years) and a claimed complex structure on the six-sphere (open 78 years, unverified). The organizers ask: how much can AI accelerate the path from idea to peer-reviewed publication, and what is a mathematician's role when AI solves conjectures faster?
Backers include Anthropic, OpenAI, DARPA expMath, Cognition, a16z, Y Combinator and dozens more. Applications are open.
Related event: Caltech to Host World's First Research-Grade Math Hackathon(4 posts)→
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