The Simons Foundation has announced a $15 million package of funding and resources with Anthropic and OpenAI aimed at helping mathematicians respond to the growing use of artificial intelligence in research. The foundation will administer the program and award support, including through an open call for proposals.
The initiative is intended to put mathematicians at the center of decisions about how AI tools should be assessed and adopted. Supported activities will include workshops and other projects where researchers can evaluate AI-assisted mathematical results, learn to use emerging tools, exchange views and develop collective standards. The structure reflects a concern that practices should be shaped by the research community rather than dictated by any one company or institution.
Anthropic and OpenAI are also expected to provide AI tools and computing capacity to researchers supported through the foundation. Those resources will extend beyond mathematics to basic science, according to the announcement. The foundation said awards and access would be driven by community needs, building on its long-running support for mathematical research.
The program arrives as AI systems become increasingly capable of assisting with proof development, formal verification and other parts of mathematical work. That progress creates practical questions as well as opportunities: researchers need ways to examine machine-assisted conclusions, understand the limits of tools and agree on standards for responsible use. Workshops can provide a venue for comparing methods and establishing how results should be checked before they enter the scholarly record.
The Simons Foundation points to previous work at the intersection of computation and science. It was an early supporter of machine learning for scientific research and helped fund development of the Lean proof assistant, a formal system that has become important in work on computer-checked and AI-assisted proofs. It has also convened lectures, workshops and collaborations focused on AI's role in mathematics.
Foundation president David Spergel framed the new effort as a way for the field to act collectively while the technology changes quickly. Rather than treating mathematics solely as a catalogue of individual proofs and theorems, the program emphasizes the shared understanding produced by a research community.
The announcement establishes the overall commitment and intended activities, while the open proposal process will determine which specific workshops and initiatives receive awards. Its central test will be whether mathematicians can build useful evaluation practices and shared norms while gaining access to tools and computing that might otherwise remain concentrated in technology companies.
