Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI put $15M toward math and AI

The Simons Foundation announced $15 million in combined funding and resources with Anthropic and OpenAI to help mathematicians evaluate AI-assisted results, learn tools, and set community standards. The foundation will run an open call for workshops and initiatives, and the labs will also provide AI tools and compute to supported researchers beyond mathematics. Simons previously backed Lean, the proof assistant widely used for formal verification. On Hacker News (226 points, 181 comments), there is no consensus. One large camp says the money will mostly reach already well-funded senior mathematicians and AI token bills, leaving early-career researchers behind. Another says grants fund students and postdocs, and that the community should set AI standards rather than labs alone. A third camp treats it as PR after recent AI theorem dumps that upset mathematicians. Simon Willison noted the foundation's size and that Anthropic and OpenAI are partners, not outsiders. Skeptics call $15M small relative to lab valuations. Sorted take: useful if you work in formal math or scientific AI tooling and want workshop or compute support, but it is not a general researcher stipend program.