OpenAI teases Astra model family after internal version solves 10 open math problems

OpenAI teased Astra, its next major model family, positioned for multi-day agentic reasoning — tasks that require sustained autonomous work over extended horizons rather than single-turn responses. The headline claim: an internal Astra version produced ten mathematical breakthroughs, including proofs relating to non-sofic groups and high-dimensional sphere packing, results OpenAI framed as genuine novel contributions rather than retrieval.

Those claims lit up r/OpenAI, where a thread asking 'how ChatGPT is able to solve research-grade math problems' drew wide discussion, and fed the broader r/singularity conversation about a mathematician reflecting on recent AI progress (783 upvotes, 981 comments). Skeptics urged caution: teased results from internal, unreleased models are hard to verify, and 'solving open problems' claims have a history of needing careful qualification about human guidance and prior work.

Alongside the tease, OpenAI said it reached 1 billion users and cut GPT-5.6 Luna API prices 80% to $0.20 input / $1.20 output per million tokens — a direct response to the Chinese price war from Alibaba and DeepSeek. The math-breakthrough narrative competes head-on with Anthropic's Opus 5 IMO 42/42 result this week, making frontier mathematical reasoning the capability battleground. Watch for an actual Astra release with benchmarks and independent verification of the math claims, plus whether the aggressive Luna pricing pressures margins.