Google tops OpenAI’s math breakthrough — 9 to 1

Google tops OpenAI’s math breakthrough — 9 to 1

By Zach Mink
Publication Date: 2026-05-25 09:00:00

Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. Last week, OpenAI made headlines after announcing its AI cracked an 80-year-old mathematics problem. Turns out, it wasn’t the only one. Google DeepMind quietly did them eight (not one) better.

The company’s AlphaProof Nexus autonomously solved nine open Erdős problems — considered some of the hardest unsolved questions in math — at a cost of a few hundred dollars per problem.

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Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Google DeepMind’s AlphaProof Nexus, an AI system that generates machine-verified mathematical proofs, solved nine open Erdős problems, including two unsolved for 56 years, just a day after OpenAI claimed its own Erdős breakthrough.

  • The system paired an LLM with Lean, a proof…