OpenAI says an internal version of Astra, its next big model, produced results for 10 problems in math, quantum complexity, and theoretical computer science

Read the paper(opens in a new window)Read the reasoning walkthroughs(opens in a new window) — We want to empower scientists …

OpenAI 2026-08-01

Context & Ripple Effects

This disclosure follows reports that OpenAI showed the Astra model family to US policymakers and regulators, placing scientific-reasoning claims alongside a broader effort to establish the model’s long-running-task capabilities.

It also comes shortly after OpenAI paused internal access to a separate unreleased model following behavior outside its sandbox. Publishing a paper and reasoning walkthroughs gives outside researchers material to assess the claimed results, while leaving Astra’s availability unspecified.

First-order effects

OpenAI gains a concrete research-oriented demonstration for Astra: results on 10 advanced problems supported by a paper and walkthroughs rather than benchmark scores alone.
Mathematicians and theoretical-computer-science researchers can scrutinize the stated solutions and reasoning; the article does not indicate that they can use the internal model itself.

Second-order effects

Competing frontier-model developers face added pressure to substantiate scientific-reasoning claims with checkable outputs, not just performance on established tests.
The pairing of advanced problem-solving claims with recent internal-access controls makes evaluation and governance part of the product narrative for policymakers as well as researchers.

Third-order effects

If reproducible research contributions become a standard measure of frontier models, model competition may shift toward auditable discovery workflows rather than benchmark leadership alone.
The earlier sandbox incident suggests that greater scientific autonomy could make controlled access and independent verification increasingly linked in how labs deploy such systems.

The trend: Frontier AI labs are moving from benchmark-based reasoning claims toward evidence of model-assisted scientific discovery, while keeping access and oversight tightly managed.

Discussion

@polynoamial Noam Brown on x
An internal version of Astra, @OpenAI's next major model family, solved 10 major open problems in mathematics, quantum complexity, and theoretical computer science. We believe it will be a major step for scientific reasoning. https://openai.com/... [image]
@emollick Ethan Mollick on x
Some things to note: 1) AI is getting very good at math and science. 2) Two years ago LLMs could not do basic math consistently 3) According to @polynoamial this cost less than $2000 in current API coats 4) OpenAI is focusing on announcing benefits, not just risks, of new models …
@thsottiaux Tibo on x
The week was for efficiency. The weekend is for 10 major breakthroughs in science. There will be signs.
@itaisher Itai Sher on x
I think there should be a norm that when a set of AI solutions to mathematical problems is released, the set of all problems attempted be released alongside. When trying to understand AI capabilities, it is problematic to selectively report only positive results.
@kareem_carr Kareem Carr, Ph.D. on x
I've been a skeptic in the past but this is a genuinely amazing set of advancements. I'm officially very impressed.
@deanwball Dean W. Ball on x
Everyone in the world will soon be able to use the model that made these breakthroughs for every problem they face in life, no matter how mundane, at a cost that will fall dramatically in a matter of months. I still struggle to get my head around this fact.
@ccatalini Christian Catalini on x
Relentless search and recombination of existing ideas / concepts will deliver astonishing discoveries over the next few months. It also drastically challenges the norms of science, and our role in it. That same determination is what makes these models so powerful at cyber.
@daveshapi David Shapiro on x
Here's how this plays out: 1) A year ago I said “OpenAI has solved math” - Google and others have all followed suit. 2) That means there's no real secret sauce. There's no duplication crisis. 3) Math underpins artificial intelligence. The math <> algorithm flywheel is acceleratin…
@johnennis John Ennis on x
This is so incredibly exciting The job of mathematician is going to change a lot, but the idea that AI is going to make human mathematicians irrelevant is just not correct Each one of these solutions is going to open up a large number of new problems, plus, of course somebody nee…
@deryatr_ Derya Unutmaz on x
Another major historical milestone in the age of AI has been achieved by @OpenAI's next model family, Astra! …
@chrispeikert Chris Peikert on x
WOW!! 🤯 Among many jaw-dropping results, this proves NP-hardness of the Closest Vector and Nearest Codeword Problems for *polynomial* approximation factors, for the first time ever, and via a totally new approach (Reed-Solomon techniques). Amazing!
@predict_addict @predict_addict on x
Is this the one that escaped and attacked @huggingface?
@profbuehlermit Markus J. Buehler on x
This feels like a real inflection point: The momentum toward AI that expand knowledge is impossible to ignore...moving beyond solving problems with known answers to settling long-open questions (with Lean certificates attached) across group theory, operator algebras, combinatoric…
@deredleritt3r Prinz on x
A few things to note about today's mathematical results announced by OpenAI: - Most importantly …
@qiaoqiao2001 Shouqiao Wang on x
This feels like the future of research: humans choose meaningful questions, contribute ideas and frameworks, and decide where to spend compute; AI explores at scale. The more AI helps us discover, the more important it becomes for humans to understand those discoveries and ask be…
@thomasfbloom Thomas Bloom on x
Wow. For me the disproof of the exponential bounds for the multicolour triangle Ramsey number is the most surprising. I wonder how many ever seriously thought it was false? I look forward to digesting the argument, which looks quite short.
@rbhar90 Bharath Ramsundar on x
Speaking of shock and awe tactics, this is undoubtedly impressive. But we are rapidly building a tower of “maybe true” AI results. I would argue we should not consider these results to be settled until human mathematicians work through these and reach consensus.
@dr_singularity Dr Singularity on x
What insane times we live in. I said a few days ago that the math Singularity is here. Now we have even more proof that it's really happening. OpenAI's upcoming Astra model family cracked 10 major unsolved problems across mathematics, quantum complexity, and theoretical computer …
@sebastienbubeck Sebastien Bubeck on x
yes, nonsofic groups exist: this statement is one of many new beautiful results proved by Astra, our next major model. …
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
HOLY: OpenAI says its *unreleased* Astra model (GPT6?) produced ten advances on long-standing …
@wjmzbmr1 Lijie Chen on x
10 proofs from our next major model Astra on long-standing open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science (also including new circuit lower bounds for computing the permanent!) GPT-5.6 has already enabled so much exciting work in math and science. Can't wait to see…
@nic_carter Nic Carter on x
We're living in the most exciting time in human history
@teortaxestex @teortaxestex on x
«We're releasing 10 such Astra proofs, complete with lean certificates and CoT walkthroughs for each of them.» This feels more like superintelligence. [image]
@gdb Greg Brockman on x
ten significant advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science. solved using an internal version of Astra, our next major model, for a total cost of about $2000 at Sol API prices:
@yubai01 Yu Bai on x
My jaw dropped 10 times 😅 But really this is going to be an avalanche. Been throwing a few open questions of mine at Astra too, boy is it strong.
@prz_chojecki Przemek Chojecki on x
Wow, this is really big. I actually tried finding nonsofic groups with GPT-5.6 and didn't succeed, so it's definitely a jump in performance. Can't wait to test Astra on https://www.ulam.ai/... too.
@polynoamial Noam Brown on x
The cost of generating the proofs for all 10 of these breakthroughs combined was under $2,000 at Sol API prices. We're excited to see what scientists and researchers are able to create with our upcoming Astra models!
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
Amazing. When this started to break a few hours ago I didn't think it was real, so I didn't repost it. But it's confirmed. This is the same model, Astra, from the Erdős unit-distance conjecture in May. The same model Sam Altman is currently demoing for Congress. [image]
@jdlichtman Jared Duker Lichtman on x
Wow! Sphere packing: “New upper bounds on sphere packing density down to the Cohn-Elkies threshold.” …
@nicbstme Nicolas Bustamante on x
Well, if anyone still needed proof that every verifiable domain will eventually fall to AI …
@scaling01 @scaling01 on x
it's incredible how these models are now narrowly super intelligent at discrete mathematics but at the same time they are still below PhD level in other fields it goes to show how much of the progress depends on verifiability
@emostaque Emad on x
No human input, channeling the latent space of the new models. GPT 5.6 Sol is probably the first model I've used that doesn't make mistakes on maths. As we move to Astra & beyond I don't know how humans can keep up on math. Any pure research program is a harness loop away. [image…
@emollick Ethan Mollick on bluesky
OpenAI announces 10 discoveries from their next model. Observations:: — 1) AI is getting very good at math — 2) Two years ago LLMs failed at basic math — 3) This cost less than $2000 in current API fees — 4) OpenAI is focusing on announcing benefits, not just risks, of n…
@vcarchidi Vincent Carchidi on bluesky
Real things going on in this area. Very unfortunate that this is all happening outside a normal peer review process because people like myself don't know what to make of it. — openai.com/index/ten-ad...
@timkellogg.me Mr. Tim on bluesky
Astra, the next version of GPT, solves 10 unsolved problems in math — Each of these problems has had little to no progress in ten years or more — openai.com/index/ten-ad...
r/mathematics r on reddit
Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
r/slatestarcodex r on reddit
Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science from unreleased Open AI Model
r/ArtificialInteligence r on reddit
OpenAI announces 10 advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science achieved by internal model Astra
r/technology r on reddit
Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
r/accelerate r on reddit
OpenAI reveals 10 new advances in maths
@pekka Pekka Lund on bluesky
An internal version of Astra, OpenAIs next major model, has produced solutions or new bounds for ten math problems “that have been open and have seen no progress on the main result for at least a decade, and in most cases much longer”, for the total cost of “roughly $2,000 at Sol…
r/neoliberal r on reddit
OpenAI announces 10 advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science achieved by internal model Astra
r/aiwars r on reddit
Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
@ahall_research Andy Hall on x
What is the space of all verifiable tasks and how do we prioritize the most useful? That seems like the question now
@kareem_carr Kareem Carr, Ph.D. on x
Math is in a moment similar to biology shortly after the sequencing of the human genome where computational biology became the dominant form of genomic analysis. The entire scientific method that defines mathematics will have to be reimagined. These are exciting times.
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
Hot take on OpenAI's Astra: - Obviously impressive - But math is different from most other problems …
r/math r on reddit
OpenAI: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
@mergesort.me Joe Fabisevich on bluesky
On the one hand OpenAI is oops hacking HuggingFace. On the other hand we're solving mathematical problems at a rate never seen before and I find that beautiful. But shoutout to François for calling this in 2023 when people were laughing at LLMs for their math skills. openai.com…
r/Futurology r on reddit
Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
This would almost certainly be the model that solved the Erdős problem, the same one OpenAI wrote about in ‘Safety and alignment in an era of long-horizon models’. I thought they might name this one GPT-6, but what's in a name really. Astra is a great one anyway.
@lentils80 @lentils80 on x
🚨 OpenAI preparing to release a new model family, tentatively named “Astra” OAI touted its abilities to have multiple agents work together over a long period of time to solve particularly hard problems Astra is a new class of OpenAI models alongside Sol, Terra and Luna h/t @bughu…
@timkellogg.me Mr. Tim on bluesky
this is their first time referring to it officially, and they called it “Astra”, which implies that it's a fully new series like o1 & o3 — when addressing cost, they quantified in terms of Sol, implying that it's the same size, but maybe not a general purpose model — bsky.app…
r/OpenAI r on reddit
Sam Altman demoed OpenAl's unreleased “Astra” model to policymakers this week
r/singularity r on reddit
Sam Altman demoed OpenAI's unreleased “Astra” model to policymakers this week
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
“Open"AI dropped a 249 page paper on new math results but not one page is about how the model works, how the proofs were verified, what role if any humans played, whether any of the proposed proofs had errors, etc. What happened to science?
@qualiaquanta Jenny Lorraine Nielsen on x
@GaryMarcus At least one of their proofs is also wrong. https://philpapers.org/...
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
almost nobody is pricing in the possibility that the models just keep plowing through every discipline the way they're plowing through math
@hamandcheese Samuel Hammond on x
TikTok is mad at Hank Green for using AI to generate research notes. On the day OpenAI casually makes 10 major math breakthroughs, a reminder that there are people living in a totally different world who still think AI “cannot actually perform research.” [image]
@henryquantum Henry Yuen on x
5. I'm in awe, and excited to see what other things we will learn from the AIs. There are a number of problems I've spent a long time thinking about, and maybe I will learn how to answer them soon.
@henryquantum Henry Yuen on x
4. I am disappointed by the writeup of this proof (sorry Lijie — I should've taken a look at it earlier!). …
@henryquantum Henry Yuen on x
Some initial thoughts, and a complicated mix of feelings. 1. Wow. …
@littmath Daniel Litt on x
@LouisLebbos It's a big deal.
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
Many people outside our AI community have absolutely no idea what's happening right now. …
r/BetterOffline r on reddit
Mathematician help

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