OpenAI touts solution to Millennium Prize problem; academics dispute credit

OpenAI claims its artificial intelligence system has solved the Navier-Stokes problem, a Millennium Prize Problem and one of the hardest open mathematical questions.

According to the company, 10,000 AI agents collaborated for 88 hours to produce the proof. However, NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster has challenged the attribution of credit.

What OpenAI Claims

The Navier-Stokes equations govern the motion of fluids like air and water.

The proof from OpenAI indicates that the equations can exhibit finite-time blowup, where fluid velocities become infinite rather than remaining smooth.

We’re sharing a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, one of the deepest problems at the frontier of mathematics.

The proof was produced by a group of agents, using an OpenAI next-generation model significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra.

The problem… pic.twitter.com/8zol3BPTL4

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 8, 2026

The solution was generated by an unreleased model which, according to OpenAI, surpasses its publicly available GPT-6 Astra system.

GPT-6 Astra subsequently took 17 hours to verify the proof's logical consistency.

The Clay Mathematics Institute has a $1 million prize for each of the seven Millennium Problems. OpenAI has stated it will not claim that reward.

The Credit Dispute

NYU's Tristan Buckmaster states that he and Anthropic mathematician Levent Alpöge were nearing a related result.

Their research was stored within OpenAI's Codex, a coding-oriented AI model. Buckmaster noted that this could have given OpenAI's team access to it.

Buckmaster addressed the concern directly in a public statement:

“I do not know what their model did, or how. I do not know whether our data was used. I am not accusing anyone of anything.”

— Tristan Buckmaster, NYU mathematician

At a press briefing, OpenAI researcher Sebastien Bubeck responded. He refuted claims that the company had accessed or utilized their unpublished work.

OpenAI also conceded another point. It cannot exclude the possibility that the researchers' use of the product influenced its model's training.

This controversy arises as OpenAI gears up for a reported $1 trillion initial public offering. Anthropic is seeking an even higher valuation through its own IPO efforts.