NYU mathematics professor Tristan Buckmaster announced three proofs in September 2026 related to one of mathematics’ most significant unsolved problems — and simultaneously alleged that OpenAI used leaked information about his work to beat him to a formal solution.
The dispute centers on the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of seven “Millennium Prize problems” designated by the Clay Mathematics Institute, each carrying a $1 million bounty for a verified solution. Navier-Stokes equations are widely used in fluid mechanics but remain poorly understood in theoretical terms.
Buckmaster conducted the research alongside Anthropic mathematician Levent Alpöge, using both OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude AI models. As they were finalizing their results, Buckmaster says they learned that information about their progress had been passed to OpenAI. When they contacted OpenAI, they were told the company had already produced a full proof. Buckmaster says follow-up questions about when OpenAI began its research yielded evasive answers, and it eventually emerged that a team had started work “in the past few days, after information about our work had reached OpenAI.”
Buckmaster also flagged a specific concern: because he used Codex extensively, and because OpenAI reserves the right to train models on Codex interactions, it is possible that OpenAI’s model could have drawn on data from his own sessions when approaching the same problem.
He further alleged that Sebastian Bubeck, who leads OpenAI’s mathematical research, asked him to remove Alpöge’s credit as part of a proposed compromise, and warned him: “Why would you ruin your career?” and “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.” Bubeck denied the broader allegations, calling them “false and inflammatory” and stating he would issue a fuller response.
Buckmaster has been careful to frame his account as a factual record rather than a formal accusation. “I am not accusing anyone of anything,” he wrote. “I am stating what I was told, when, and what was proposed to me.” The dispute may intensify existing debates about AI’s role in academic research and the competitive pressures surrounding high-stakes mathematical problems.
Source: TechCrunch