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Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI commit $15M to help mathematicians navigate AI

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On 15 October 2026 the Simons Foundation launched a $15 million program of funding and resources with Anthropic and OpenAI, which each pledged $5 million including compute and model access. The foundation will award money through an open call for workshops and initiatives on evaluating AI results and setting standards.

The Simons Foundation has launched a $15 million initiative with Anthropic and OpenAI to help mathematicians deal with the fast rise of AI in their field. The foundation announced it on 15 October 2026. It will manage the money and decide who gets it, including through an open call for proposals.

What the money is for

According to the Simons Foundation, the funding will support workshops and other initiatives that help researchers:

  • evaluate recent AI-assisted results
  • learn and use new AI tools
  • share perspectives across the community
  • shape collective standards for how AI is used in mathematics

The $15 million is described as combined funding and resources, so not all of it is cash. Anthropic and OpenAI will also give AI tools and computing resources to Simons-supported researchers. The foundation says this extends beyond mathematics into basic science.

Who is putting in what

  • OpenAI said it is contributing $5 million, plus access to its models and computing resources. The foundation will manage the funding and award it for workshops, conferences and special programs.
  • Anthropic said in a post on X that it has committed $5 million of funding, compute and Claude access, with the foundation running awards through a community-driven approach.
  • The foundation's announcement gives the combined total but does not break down its own share.

The foundation wants mathematicians in charge

Simons Foundation President David Spergel framed the program as one the community should steer:

"The community should be driving discussions of how these tools are evaluated, adopted and used, not any single company or institution."

The foundation points to its record here. It helped fund the development of the Lean proof assistant, a programming language that lets computers check mathematical proofs and has made AI-assisted proofs possible.

The backdrop: a flood of AI maths papers

The announcement comes just over a week after OpenAI published about 720 maths manuscripts produced by an unreleased internal model on GitHub. We covered that release in an earlier post. OpenAI added a note to that announcement on 15 October saying its $5 million is meant to help mathematicians "examine, understand, and build on results produced by AI, including those shared in this post."

Not everyone welcomed the release. Euronews reported that the Association for Human Mathematics criticised OpenAI, saying "mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done" and accusing the company of "total disregard for the norms of scientific research." Euronews also cited TechCrunch reporting that two human mathematicians said they had been close to a similar result on the Navier–Stokes equations, which OpenAI said in September its model had reached. OpenAI denies having seen their work.

Euronews headlined OpenAI's pledge as an attempt to deal with this backlash. OpenAI itself describes the funding as support for the mathematics community.

What happens next

  • The Simons Foundation will publish an open call for proposals. The announcement gives no dates or award sizes yet.
  • Funded activities are expected to include workshops, conferences, lectures and special programs.
  • Researchers backed by the foundation will be able to use tools and compute from both AI companies.

Why it matters

AI systems can now produce mathematical results faster than people can check them. Deciding which results to trust, how to credit them and how AI should be used in research is becoming practical work for the field. This program pays for that work, while leaving the decisions with the foundation and mathematicians rather than the AI companies funding part of it.

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