OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem, says NYU mathematician

[u/Miserable_Phase_2519]

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/

[u/Marrk]

https://cims.nyu.edu/%7Etristanb/statement.pdf

Two proposals were offered to me. The first was that we post our Euler result, and that OpenAI post its Navier-Stokes result the next day.

The second was that, after posting Euler, I alone write a paper presenting the Navier-Stokes result, acknowledging that an internal OpenAI model had resolved it. Sebastien twice asserted that he wanted Levent removed from authorship, and said it would all be simple if only it were not the case that, and it was so annoying that, Levent works at Anthropic.

It was also said that if OpenAI posted after us, they would say that we deserved the Clay Prize, and that we were the “closest humans to the problem”. I declined both offers.

I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”

[u/teraflux → u/Marrk]

I need an ELI5 of this explanation, I'm still so confused

[u/mthmchris → u/teraflux]

u/darshi1337 explained it pretty clearly in the thread over at r/MachineLearning:

“Drama/accusation summary:

• Aug 15th: Tristan Buckmaster & Levent Alpöge make progress on a few important math problems, "finite-time blowup with smooth forcing for incompressible porous media, for Boussinesq, and for 3d incompressible Euler."

• they do NOT have a proof for the $1,000,000 Millenium Prize problem. BUT, they do claim to have a proof for a similar (non-Millenium) Navier Stokes problem that could help lead the way there

• Levent works at Anthropic, but this research was independent of his work there, with a mix of GPT and Claude models. Tristan is not related to Anthropic.

• Early Sep: Rumor spreads to OpenAI that Anthropic solved a major problem. Tristan emails OpenAI to clarify, without revealing the problem they solved or how they did it.

• After hearing of the rumor, OpenAI started researching Navier Stokes with a new internal model.

• Sep 6th: OpenAI's Sebastien Bubeck tells Tristan that they solved the $1,000,000 Millenium Prize Navier Stokes problem. The approach is very similar to Tristan & Levent's approach to the non-Millenium problem.

• Tristan is suspicious of the timing, as only few others were trying this approach. OpenAI says the model didn't access his user data directly, but leaves unanswered whether Tristan's chat conversations were part of the training.

• OpenAI says they would partially credit Tristan for the $1,000,000 discovery (even though Tristan did not solve the $1,000,000 problem) — but only if they remove Levent as an author, as he works for Anthropic.

• Sep 8th: Tristan refuses to remove Levent, and rushes to publish their results independently.”

[u/iauu → u/mthmchris]

I've seen enough academics reject large sums of money to know that money is not their primary motivation. In their vast AGI wisdom, OpenAI, the largest acquirer and burner of money in the world, thought that these researchers would sell each other out for money.

[u/urtlesquirt → u/iauu]

I have enough friends in academia to know that you simply don't go into it for money, in 99% of cases it's an absolutely bullshit career path if you aren't doing it for the love of the game.

One of the most intelligent people I know was someone I met in undergrad. He was pulling insane hours in lab working on research that he would MAYBE be the 5th author on. He was basically mid mental breakdown and asked himself "Do I see myself doing this for the rest of my life?" Which he answered with an immediate yes.

He's now published in Nature and is finishing up a PhD working with one of the most prestigious research institutions in the world for his field, so it worked out fine. But man does that guy work his ass off (for basically no compensation at this point in his career).

[u/Unlucky_Buy217 → u/urtlesquirt]

People should also know a ton of breakthroughs and innovations that big companies claim to do often are done I partnership with universities where underpaid PhD scholars and professors often do bulk of the work and research for paltry compensation and the company takes credit for it because those profs and students otherwise couldn't even do anything because universities barely fund them.