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

The Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI will commit $15 million in combined funding and resources to help mathematicians respond to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in their field, the foundation announced on October 15. The foundation will manage and award the money, including through an open call for proposals.

Who is putting in what

The foundation's announcement does not break the $15 million down by partner. In posts on X the same day, each company described its own part. OpenAI said it is "contributing $5 million to a new Simons Foundation initiative" and will also give Simons Foundation-supported researchers access to its models and computing resources. Anthropic said it has "committed $5 million of funding, compute, and Claude access."

Both companies said the foundation will decide how the money is used. OpenAI said its funding will be managed and awarded by the foundation and will support workshops, conferences and special programs; Anthropic said the foundation will manage the award "through a community-driven approach." The two companies describe their contributions in different terms, and the foundation has not said how much of the total is its own money or how in-kind computing is valued.

According to the foundation, the awards will support workshops and initiatives that help researchers evaluate recent AI-assisted results, learn and use new tools, share perspectives and shape collective standards for AI use. The companies' tools and computing will also be offered to Simons-supported researchers outside mathematics, in basic science.

The foundation's role

The Simons Foundation says it was an early backer of machine learning for science, including funding the development of the Lean proof assistant, which it credits with making AI-assisted proofs possible. "The community should be driving discussions of how these tools are evaluated, adopted and used, not any single company or institution," said David Spergel, the foundation's president, in the announcement. OpenAI said in its post that the effort will help mathematicians examine results produced by AI, "including the results we recently published."

The announcement does not yet list a deadline, eligibility rules or how to apply. Inside Philanthropy, which included the effort among open calls in its October 16 roundup, noted that the foundation reported $4.48 billion in assets in its 2024 IRS filing.

What funders and grantees can note

In our view, the design choice worth watching is that the foundation, not the companies, makes the awards, while the companies supply money and computing. Grantees offered in-kind technology by companies can ask who decides, how contributions are valued and what is disclosed. For a larger example of technology companies joining a nonprofit-led science effort, see Biohub's open biology data push.