Neo Labs and The Limits of AI Math & Science

A PhD in Math takes a closer look at LLMs, Paul Erdős and AI's role in maths and science.

Paul Erdős, Nature.

June 30th, 2026. ¹

Good Morning,

Can AI further science? How are hugely well funded AI labs like OpenAI trying to prove this? Today’s article explores the fascinating case of the frontiers of Mathematics. I geek out also about AI’s impact on science as evidenced by a new breed of AI startups generally understood as Neo Labs. To me these are moonshots that are typically highly funded AI research labs, often founded by elite ex-researchers from giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google Brain.

Meanwhile I’m always reading AI and economic reports, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) compares the capital trajectory of the current Artificial Intelligence boom against four major historical economic bubbles and innovation cycles.

The Financial Times via the BIS.

While drawing structural analogies to the 1840s railways and the 1990s dot-com era, the BIS highlighted several unprecedented, highly concerning anomalies unique to the 2025–2026 AI investment cycle.

The Exponential View is reporting that the generative AI economy has generated $110 billion in sales over the past 12 months. Check out their State of the AI Economy Report as well for some great summer reading.

Azeem Azhar’s Newsletter is called Exponential View. Looking at the crossroads of AI and innovation as a publication now for 11 years!

The Exponential Demand for Compute is Accelerating Revenue

Exponential View. The publication claims that the generative AI economy has generated $110 billion in sales over the past 12 months. It is growing fast. On an annualized basis, the revenue run rate exceeds $175 billion.

AI Exuberance in an era of Token Maxing and renewed Token Minimalism

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BIS. BIS refers to the Bank for International Settlements. It is an international financial institution owned by central banks that fosters global monetary and financial stability and acts as a bank for central banks.

The Impact on the Labor Market due to AI Remains Highly Uncertain

In the near term, the ongoing AI investment boom raises questions about the sustainability of the current economic expansion, according to the BIS.

Key AI News Stories I’m Following & A Sampling of AI Neo Labs (startups)

• Apple and Microsoft have raised consumer prices (around 20%) on hardware and electronics in part due to the HBM supply chain crisis due to the datacenter build-out.

• The pace of “Neo Lab” (a new category of AI startup) creation, AI labs designed to focus on pushing AI faster have received considerable recently funding like Mirendil, Engram, General Intuition, Prometheus, Trajectory and more.

• Mirendil is building "self-accelerating" AI that can do the actual work of an AI researcher. For instance, they train frontier models that are expert at AI R&D and build the product around it.