Reddit user claims OpenAI poured $15M of compute to snatch Navier-Stokes proof from two mathematicians

TheOnlyVibemaster · reddit · 2026-09-09

An anonymous AI researcher alleges that after mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge spent a year finding a promising blowup route for the Navier-Stokes millennium problem, OpenAI threw $15M of non-public model compute and 10,000 agents at finishing the remaining work to beat them to the headline, allegedly after a heated phone call. One of the mathematicians was reportedly using an internal Anthropic model, turning it into a two-company compute race. The author argues that even without outright theft, outspending researchers on their own method erodes trust in using commercial AI APIs for research.

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