Altman names OpenAI’s internal “Model Name-Hold My Beer”
Sam Altman said on John Collison’s Cheeky Pint podcast that OpenAI used an internal model known as “Model Name-Hold My Beer” to solve difficult technical problems. He claimed the model repeatedly solved researchers’ hardest problems across multiple fields and said some were among the problems OpenAI published. The report did not establish the model’s specifications, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for clarification about its possible connection to OpenAI’s published mathematical results.
The remarks identify an internal OpenAI model and include Altman’s claim that it addressed difficult research problems across fields. His reference to published problems makes the model potentially relevant to understanding OpenAI’s recent mathematical output, but its exact role remains unclear.
Even Sam “magic intelligence in the sky” Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and the poster child of the AI boom, has mixed feelings about the speed at which the technology is developing.
In an appearance earlier this week on Stripe cofounder John Collison’s podcast, called Cheeky Pint, Altman reclined in a pub booth, sipped IPA and Guinness, and eulogized the many experts whose careers are actively being upended by the rise of AI.
That sting has been felt especially keenly in recent weeks by mathematicians, after OpenAI controversially published its AI-assisted solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which had vexed the field for decades. Some mathematicians called foul, accusing the company of what amounted in their view to plagiarism. Then, e arlier this month, OpenAI followed up by publishing results for nearly 400 additional long-standing math problems.
In much the same way that professional chess players look back on Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov, future generations of mathematicians will probably look back at OpenAI’s string of proofs in late 2026 as the watershed moment when their field was irrevocably altered by AI.
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