OpenAI research lead Dan Roberts confirmed the exit on Thursday, acknowledging that the rapid advancement of AI in mathematics has become a source of significant disruption.
The protesting academics argue that AI companies are producing "slop mathematics," a term they use to describe theoretical claims made by AI agents that lack formal proofs or practical applications.
According to the open letter, this forces human researchers to perform the uncompensated labor of verifying or discrediting these results.
Tensions peaked after OpenAI claimed its models solved the 90-year-old Navier-Stokes equations, which predict the movement of liquids and gases, leading to allegations that the company may have utilized researchers' de-identified data without proper credit.
The hackathon organizers, primarily undergraduates, expressed regret over the controversy and stated the event was intended to help students responsibly use AI tools to augment human understanding.
Before the withdrawal, OpenAI and Anthropic had pledged $2 million in AI tokens—digital credits used to pay for the computing power required to run AI models—to support the competition.
While the first round of the contest involves a 40-hour sprint to solve open problems, it remains unclear how OpenAI’s departure will affect the funding and resource availability for the participating student teams.