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 degree math competitions, the businesses independently introduced in current days.

The end result underscores simply how briskly AI programs are advancing, and but, how evenly matched Google and OpenAI appear to be within the AI race. AI corporations are competing fiercely for the general public notion of being forward within the AI race: an intangible battle of “vibes” that may have massive 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, which means it required people to translate issues right into a machine‑readable format. This yr, each OpenAI and Google entered “casual” programs into the competitors, which have been in a position to ingest questions and generate proof‑primarily based solutions in pure language. Each corporations declare their AI fashions accurately answered 5 out of six questions on IMO’s take a look at, scoring larger 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 symbolize breakthroughs round AI reasoning fashions in non-verifiable domains. Whereas AI reasoning fashions are inclined to do nicely on questions with easy solutions, resembling simple arithmetic or coding duties, these programs wrestle on duties with extra ambiguous options, resembling shopping for a terrific chair or serving to with complicated analysis.

Nonetheless, 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 nicely 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 asserting its gold‑medal prematurely — shortly after IMO introduced which excessive schoolers had gained the competitors on Friday evening — and for not having their mannequin’s take a look at formally evaluated by IMO.

Btw as an apart, we didn’t announce on Friday as a result of we revered the IMO Board’s unique request that each one AI labs share their outcomes solely after the official outcomes had been verified by unbiased consultants & the scholars had rightly obtained the acclamation they deserved

— Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) July 21, 2025

Thang Luong, a Google DeepMind senior researcher and lead for the IMO challenge, advised TechCrunch that Google waited to announce its IMO outcomes to respect the scholars taking part within the competitors.

Luong stated that Google has been working with IMO’s organizers since final yr in preparation for the take a look at and needed to have the IMO president’s blessing and official grading earlier than asserting 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 degree [performance].”

Noam Brown, a senior OpenAI researcher who labored on the IMO mannequin, advised TechCrunch that IMO reached out to OpenAI just a few 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 programs that it thought have been extra value pursuing. Brown says OpenAI didn’t know IMO was conducting an off-the-cuff take a look at 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 stated the corporate reached out to IMO, which then advised the corporate to attend to announce till after IMO’s Friday evening award ceremony.

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

Google isn’t essentially improper right here — it did undergo a extra official, rigorous course of to realize its gold medal rating — however the debate could miss the larger image: AI fashions from a number of main AI labs are enhancing shortly. Nations from world wide 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 big lead over the business, it definitely feels as if the race is extra intently 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.