Altman says OpenAI has spent hundreds of millions on math and will keep releasing results

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company has spent in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars on mathematical problems and will keep publishing AI-generated results, even as mathematicians struggle to evaluate them. He made the comments on an episode of the Cheeky Pint podcast released Thursday, as reported by The Verge.

Key figures and statements

• Total spend: Altman estimated OpenAI has spent in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars on math.
• Navier-Stokes: Around $10 million, "maybe a little more," went into the company's Navier-Stokes solution, one of the Millennium Prize problems, according to Altman.
• Volume: OpenAI has released hundreds of mathematical results this month alone, often with brief writeups that researchers have described as poorly written and hard to follow.
• Unreleased work: Asked whether OpenAI has more discoveries than the hundreds of proofs already released, Altman said: "We do. Of course."

Altman on the disruption

Altman said he has empathy for mathematicians but argued the public's right to new knowledge outweighs the disruption. "I think, on net, the world deserves to understand how the universe works," he said. "But I do have empathy for the method." He added: "Humanity deserves fundamental knowledge, and we should not be sitting on a major fundamental science discovery."

He acknowledged that OpenAI needs to improve how it communicates findings. He also said the company's pursuit of math problems did "get out of control" for a short period, but described that as deliberate, a way to probe the limits of its models. He cited an internal Slack channel called "Model Name-Hold My Beer," where employees threw the hardest problems they could at the models.

Criticism from researchers

Mathematicians speaking to The Verge have criticized OpenAI's announcements for inadequate attribution, little context and insufficient verification. They say they are left doing the slow work of checking results while the company releases more.

OpenAI is also accused of withholding. Following the announcement of three major breakthroughs in mathematics, physics and computer science, researchers told The Verge this week they are frustrated by what they see as gatekeeping. Details of one claimed result, involving Yang-Mills theory, have not been released publicly. OpenAI says this follows the recommendations of a hand-picked group of experts it consulted on how to release it. That approach runs counter to the advice of a previous group of mathematicians the company consulted, and OpenAI describes it as part of a new approach to communicating its findings.

What this means

Altman's remarks put numbers on the scale of OpenAI's investment in mathematics and confirm that the public releases are a subset of what the company holds. His stated position is that releasing findings outweighs the cost to researchers, while also conceding that communication needs work.

The tension in the record is specific. Altman says OpenAI should not sit on major discoveries, yet the Yang-Mills details remain unpublished on the advice of a hand-picked expert group, contrary to the advice of an earlier group of mathematicians. For researchers, the practical burden is verification: hundreds of results in a single month, thin writeups, and attribution concerns. The reported spending also feeds a concern researchers have raised, that they may be priced out of their own fields. The Verge's reporting indicates no pause is coming.

Source: The Verge, Oct 30, 2026.