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 excessive school-level math competitions, the businesses independently introduced in current days.
The outcomes underscore 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 being forward within the AI race: an intangible battle of “vibes” that may have large implications for securing high AI expertise. Loads 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, that 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 in a position to ingest questions and generate proof‑based mostly solutions in pure language. Each firms declare their AI fashions appropriately answered 5 out of six questions on IMO’s check, scoring greater than most highschool college students and Google’s AI mannequin from final yr, with out requiring any human-machine translation.
In interviews with Trendster, researchers behind OpenAI and Google’s IMO efforts claimed that these gold-medal performances signify breakthroughs round AI reasoning fashions in non-verifiable domains. Whereas AI reasoning fashions are likely to do effectively on questions with easy solutions, comparable to basic math or coding duties, these techniques battle on duties with extra ambiguous options, comparable to shopping for a fantastic 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, when you’re going to enter AI fashions right into a math contest for prime schoolers, you would possibly as effectively 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 gained 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 mission, informed Trendster that Google waited to announce its IMO outcomes to respect the scholars taking part within the competitors.
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Luong mentioned that Google has been working with IMO’s organizers since final yr in preparation for the check and needed 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 mentioned. “So any analysis that’s not based mostly 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, informed Trendster that IMO reached out to OpenAI a number of months in the past about taking part 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 value pursuing. Brown says OpenAI didn’t know IMO was conducting a casual 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 realized of its gold-medal rating, Brown mentioned the corporate reached out to IMO, which then informed the corporate to attend to announce till after IMO’s Friday night time award ceremony.
IMO didn’t reply to Trendster’s request for remark.
Google isn’t essentially incorrect 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 enhancing shortly. International locations from around the globe despatched their brightest college students to compete at IMO this yr, and just some % of them scored in addition to OpenAI and Google’s AI fashions did.
Whereas OpenAI used to have a major lead over the trade, it definitely feels as if the race is extra intently matched than any firm wish to admit. OpenAI is anticipated to launch GPT-5 within the coming months, and the corporate definitely hopes to present off the impression that it nonetheless leads the AI trade.





