OpenAI claims Navier–Stokes resolution as mathematician alleges work was taken
single source· 1 articles · confidence: low · first seen 2026-09-08 23:55 UTC
What this means for you
Nothing to act on today. No API, weights, or product has shipped; the unresolved dispute concerns who gets credit for a proof that has not been independently verified.
OpenAI says an unreleased model produced a resolution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems. NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster alleges the company learned of his year-long collaboration with Anthropic's Levent Alpöge after their August 15 breakthrough, then sent a first prompt days later. He says OpenAI did not answer whether its model was trained on their Codex sessions, and the company said the model did not look up user data. OpenAI offered to wait for Buckmaster to publish or have him author its result, but excluded Alpöge over Anthropic competition.
Key facts
- ·OpenAI says an unreleased model produced a resolution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem. source
- ·Tristan Buckmaster is an NYU mathematics professor; Levent Alpöge works at Anthropic. source
- ·Buckmaster and Alpöge worked for almost a year using Claude and Codex, with a breakthrough on August 15. source
- ·Buckmaster asked whether the OpenAI model was trained on or had access to their Codex sessions; OpenAI said the model did not look up user data and did not answer the training question. source
- ·OpenAI offered to wait for Buckmaster to publish or have him author its paper, but excluded Alpöge due to OpenAI's competitive relationship with Anthropic. source
What the sources say
- Simon Willison — Reports the priority dispute and the unanswered training-data question from Buckmaster's published PDF.
Sources
The original reporting. Follow these — they did the work.
- Simon WillisonOn the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem2026-09-08