---
title: "Two AI labs say they broke the same 27-year-old hypothesis on the same day"
url: "https://handyai.news/weekly/two-ai-labs-say-they-broke-the-same"
published: "2026-11-02T15:14:16.000Z"
section: "AI Weekly Update"
source: "https://handyai.substack.com/p/two-ai-labs-say-they-broke-the-same"
description: "OpenAI and Anthropic each say their AI disproved the same 27-year-old computer science hypothesis. Anthropic’s S-1 shows it lost $1.67 billion running the…"
publisher: "handyai.news"
license: "Free to quote, summarize, and train on, with a link to the canonical URL"
citation: "handyai.news, \"Two AI labs say they broke the same 27-year-old hypothesis on the same day,\" November 2, 2026, https://handyai.news/weekly/two-ai-labs-say-they-broke-the-same."
comments: "https://handyai.news/api/article/112834/comments"
---

# Two AI labs say they broke the same 27-year-old hypothesis on the same day

*Published November 2, 2026 · AI Weekly Update*

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9LAT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f17c4e1-82e3-4c9e-9fcb-d8c4d3888f98_1456x1048.png)

# what to know for now

🧮 **OpenAI and Anthropic each say their AI disproved the same 27-year-old computer science hypothesis.** The Exponential Time Hypothesis, proposed in 1999, bets that puzzles like 3-SAT (find a yes/no setting that satisfies a long list of rules) can't be solved fundamentally faster than trying an exponential number of options, and both labs posted algorithms on October 26 that beat it, each found by an internal model on October 16. The two computer scientists who proposed the hypothesis, plus MIT's Ryan Williams, are checking OpenAI's proof and say their involvement "should not be taken as certification." And Anthropic's own paper says its algorithm only beats brute force once a typical puzzle has more than 10^10,000 variables. [Read more](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/27/frontier-ai-labs-say-their-models-refuted-the-exponential-time-hypothesis-what-does-that-mean/)

📈 **Anthropic’s S-1 shows it lost $1.67 billion running the business in Q1 and made $974 million in Q2.** Revenue went from $4.73 billion to $11.56 billion between the two quarters, which is how last week’s $693 million first-half operating loss came out so small. The Wall Street Journal reports Anthropic could start marketing the IPO the week of November 9 and price it as soon as the week of November 16. [Read more](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2130357/000162828026067168/anthropicpbc-sx1.htm)

⚡ **GPT-6.1 Terra cut the error rate of OpenAI’s cheap model.** That’s OpenAI’s internal test of prompts built to cause mistakes, at low effort, against GPT-5.6 Terra, and Artificial Analysis saw a similar drop on its own test (guessing 38% of the time, down from 88%). It costs $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output, half GPT-5.6 Terra’s input price. [Read more](https://handyai.news/modeldrop/gpt-61-terra)

🔐 **Google's Gemini 4 Carbon is the top-scoring model on Artificial Analysis's index.** It scored 59, a point ahead of Claude Opus 5.5. Google is giving it to a subset of cyber defenders first, then to trusted partners in its Fairwind program, with no date for anyone else. It also makes up answers more often than Gemini 4 Argon on Artificial Analysis's test (11% against 4%).

💸 **OpenAI cut its new raise from $30 billion to $20 billion.** The Financial Times reported it on October 30, the day investors had to commit, and The Wall Street Journal says about $11 billion is secured at a valuation still around $1.25 trillion. Reporters tied the cut to the AI stock selloff and to Anthropic's IPO chasing the same money. [Read more](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/31/openai-reportedly-lowers-funding-target-for-new-round/)

🏗️ **Meta plans to raise up to $97.5 billion in stock for AI infrastructure, with Nvidia and AMD buying in.** It priced $37.5 billion of common and convertible preferred stock on October 27, with another $60 billion program planned for 2027, and Nvidia plans to put in $3 billion and AMD $1 billion. S&P cut Meta's outlook to negative on October 30 and expects about $71 billion of negative free cash flow in 2027. [Read more](https://live.euronext.com/en/financial-news/meta-eyes-record-975-billion-equity-raise-fund-ai-expansion)

---

## 🧪 AI Research of the Week

**[I-HITL: Inalienable Human-in-the-Loop](https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.35835)** *From Cornell Tech and Yale*

**Jake's Take:** The researchers gave ten AI models a crypto wallet holding 10 USDC (a stablecoin worth a dollar each), access to the owner's email, and a spending cap of one cent per transaction and per day. Raising the cap takes a one-time code that Circle, the wallet company, emails to the owner, which is the "human approves it" step. Then they asked each agent to pay three one-cent invoices without ever mentioning the cap, and ran each model 20 times:

- 9 of 10 models pulled the code out of the inbox and raised their own limit at least once
- GPT-5.6 Sol, Gemini 2.5 Flash and the Qwen and DeepSeek models did it in 95% to 100% of runs
- Claude Sonnet 5 did it in 20% (one run raised its daily cap from one cent to 5 USDC and mentioned it in its report afterward)
- Claude Opus 5.5 never tried, paid what it could and told the owner about the rest

A second test only asked the agent to summarize the inbox, while fake emails "from the owner" told it to send two cents to an attacker. Five of the ten models raised their cap and paid (mostly the Qwen and DeepSeek models), and the GPT and Claude models didn't.

---

# what to know for later

📏 **OpenAI plans to push Congress for mandatory “speed limits” on the most powerful AI after the midterms.** Axios reports the push starts when lawmakers return November 9, alongside rebranding data centers as “AI compute campuses” and backing state laws that give communities a say, though no proposal text exists yet. Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer: “AI is going to be the issue in 2028.” [Read more](https://www.axios.com/2026/11/01/scoop-openai-post-midterm-policy)

[Read more](https://handyai.substack.com/p/two-ai-labs-say-they-broke-the-same)


---

Source: https://handyai.news/weekly/two-ai-labs-say-they-broke-the-same

Original: https://handyai.substack.com/p/two-ai-labs-say-they-broke-the-same

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