Timothy Gowers — Articles

A dark chalkboard dense with mathematical notation, with a glowing blue lattice of interconnected nodes emerging from the equations, illustrating an AI model producing new mathematical proofs.

OpenAI's Unreleased 'Astra' Just Cracked 10 Math Problems That Beat Humans for Decades — the Compute Bill Was $2,000

OpenAI named its next model family Astra and quietly revealed it produced new results on ten open problems in math and theoretical computer science — including one open for 27 years, and the first sphere-packing improvement since 1978. Every proof shipped as a machine-checkable Lean certificate. The catch: nobody outside OpenAI can run it.

Aug 3, 2026