OpenAI claims Navier-Stokes blow-up proof, mathematicians dispute it

On September 8, 2026, OpenAI said an internal model "significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra" produced a proof and Lean formalization settling statements C and D of the Clay Navier-Stokes problem: smooth solutions can blow up. The run used about 10,000 concurrent agents over 88 hours, 2.7 million messages and ~130 billion output tokens (~$6.5M at Astra list prices). NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster says OpenAI started after learning of his work with Levent Alpöge and that he was pressed to drop a co-author.

• Run: ~10,000 agents, 88 hours, 2.7M messages, ~130B output tokens
• Estimated cost at GPT-6 Astra list prices: about $6.5M for a $1M prize
• Lean formalization and verification took 17 hours with GPT-6 Astra
• Buckmaster: first prompt came after news of his work reached OpenAI