OpenAI and Google outdo the mathletes, however not one another

AI fashions from OpenAI and Google DeepMind achieved gold medal scores within the 2025 Worldwide Math Olympiad (IMO), one of many world’s oldest and most difficult highschool stage math competitions, the businesses independently introduced in latest days.

The consequence underscores simply how briskly AI techniques are advancing, and but, how evenly matched Google and OpenAI appear to be within the AI race. AI firms are competing fiercely for the general public notion of behind forward within the AI race: an intangible battle of “vibes” that may have huge implications for securing prime AI expertise. Plenty of AI researchers come from backgrounds in aggressive math, so benchmarks like IMO imply greater than others.

Final yr, Google scored a silver medal at IMO utilizing a “formal” system, which means it required people to translate issues right into a machine‑readable format. This yr, each OpenAI and Google entered “casual” techniques into the competitors, which had been capable of ingest questions and generate proof‑primarily based solutions in pure language. Each firms declare their AI fashions scored greater than most highschool college students and Google’s AI mannequin from final yr, with out requiring any human-machine translation.

In interviews with TechCrunch, researchers behind OpenAI and Google’s IMO efforts claimed that these gold medal performances characterize breakthroughs round AI reasoning fashions in non-verifiable domains. Whereas AI reasoning fashions are inclined to do properly on questions with simple solutions, comparable to math or coding duties, these techniques wrestle on duties with extra ambiguous options, comparable to shopping for a terrific chair or serving to with complicated analysis.

Nevertheless, Google is elevating questions round how OpenAI performed and introduced its gold medal IMO efficiency. In any case, for those who’re going to enter AI fashions right into a math contest for top schoolers, you would possibly as properly argue like youngsters.

Shortly after OpenAI introduced its feat on Saturday morning, Google DeepMind’s CEO and researchers took to social media to slam OpenAI for saying its gold‑medal prematurely — shortly after IMO introduced which excessive schoolers had received the competitors on Friday night time — and for not having their mannequin’s check formally evaluated by IMO.

Thang Luong, a Google DeepMind senior researcher and lead for the IMO venture, instructed TechCrunch that Google waited to announce its IMO outcomes to respect the scholars collaborating within the competitors.

Luong stated that Google has been working with IMO’s organizers since final yr in preparation for the check and wished to have the IMO president’s blessing and official grading earlier than saying its official outcomes, which it did on Monday morning.

“The IMO organizers have their grading guideline,” Luong stated. “So any analysis that’s not primarily based on that guideline couldn’t make any declare about gold-medal stage [performance].”

Noam Brown, a senior OpenAI researcher who labored on the IMO mannequin, instructed TechCrunch that IMO reached out to OpenAI just a few months in the past about collaborating in a proper math competitors, however the ChatGPT-maker declined as a result of it was engaged on pure language techniques that it thought had been extra price pursuing. Brown says OpenAI didn’t know IMO was conducting an off-the-cuff check with Google.

OpenAI says it employed third-party evaluators — three former IMO medalists who understood the grading system — to grade its AI mannequin’s efficiency. After OpenAI discovered of its gold medal rating, Brown stated the corporate reached out to IMO, which then instructed the corporate to attend to announce till after IMO’s Friday night time award ceremony.

IMO didn’t reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark.

Google isn’t essentially fallacious right here — it did undergo a extra official, rigorous course of to realize its gold medal rating — however the debate might miss the larger image: AI fashions from a number of main AI labs are bettering shortly. International locations from world wide despatched their brightest college students to compete at IMO this yr, and just some p.c of them scored in addition to OpenAI and Google’s AI fashions did.

Whereas OpenAI used to have a big lead over the business, it definitely feels as if the race is extra carefully matched than any firm want to admit. OpenAI is predicted to launch GPT-5 within the coming months, and the corporate definitely hopes to offer off the impression that it nonetheless leads the AI business.