x.com/Mihonarium/status/2097400906207703467
1 correction found
They admit they thought Levent Alpöge, who works at Anthropic, had already solved it; they raced because they wanted to make a concurrent release.
OpenAI’s own timeline does not say this. It says the rumor concerned both Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster, and that OpenAI started its Navier–Stokes effort on September 1; the concurrent-release offer came later, on September 6, after OpenAI says its proof and Lean verification were already complete.
Full reasoning
OpenAI's published account contradicts both parts of this sentence.
-
Who OpenAI thought had a result
OpenAI did not say it thought Levent Alpöge alone had solved Navier–Stokes. Its statement says the rumor was "related to Levent Alpöge ... and Tristan Buckmaster" and that it believed "they also had a solution of Navier–Stokes." That is a claim about the pair, not Alpöge alone. -
Why/when OpenAI 'raced'
OpenAI says it began the Millennium-problems effort on September 1, 2026 after hearing rumors and after seeing a step-change in its internal model's capabilities. In the same post, OpenAI says it only reached out to Buckmaster and Alpöge about a concurrent release on September 6, 2026, after "the completion of our full project and Lean verification." That means the concurrent-release proposal came after OpenAI says the work was already done, not as the reason it started the effort.
So this sentence compresses the timeline in a way that reverses cause and effect, and it misstates the target of the rumor by changing Alpöge + Buckmaster into Alpöge alone.
2 sources
- On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem | OpenAI
"On Tuesday, September 1, we heard rumors ... we launched an effort" and later: "After the completion of our full project and Lean verification (on September 6th) ... we reached out to them to offer a concurrent release ..." The same section says the rumor was related to "Levent Alpöge ... and Tristan Buckmaster" and that OpenAI believed "they also had a solution of Navier–Stokes."
- OpenAI claims huge maths breakthrough on a famed ‘Millennium Problem’ | Nature
Nature reports that OpenAI "decided to focus their resources on the Navier-Stokes problem on 1 September, after hearing rumours that two mathematicians, Levent Alpöge ... and Tristan Buckmaster ... had solved some version of the fluid-motion puzzle".