RSA-896, a 270-decimal-digit semiprime, was factored on September 19, 2026, by researcher Stephen A. Weis with assistance from Anthropic’s Claude AI model. This achievement pushed the public factoring record from 862 bits to 896 bits in just 16 days. The previous record was set on September 3, 2026, by Eric Lu of Cognition, who factored RSA-260 (862 bits) using the Devin AI agent. Both breakthroughs relied on the general number field sieve (GNFS), a classical algorithm with no quantum computing component. RSA-2048, the standard most widely deployed today, remains far beyond reach, but the acceleration introduced by AI tooling suggests the progression curve may steepen further.
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