In our paper, published today in Nature, we introduce AlphaTensor, the first artificial intelligence (AI) system for discovering novel, efficient, and provably correct algorithms for fundamental tasks such as matrix multiplication. This sheds light on a 50-year-old open question in mathematics about finding the fastest way to multiply two matrices. This paper is a stepping stone in DeepMind’s mission to advance science and unlock the most fundamental problems using AI. Our system, AlphaTensor, builds upon AlphaZero, an agent that has shown superhuman performance on board games, like chess, Go and shogi, and this work shows the journey of AlphaZero from playing games to tackling unsolved mathematical problems for the first time.