>were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all
They were surprised another competitor had not wastefully thrown $20 million+ worth of compute at a problem they had no business solving in the first place?
That's reaching, imho.
Why shouldn't they advance math research and test the limits of their models?
Why is it wasteful to solve one of the most famous problems in modern mathematics? And why would one particular company have no business solving it in the first place?