AI systems reach gold-medal level at the International Mathematical Olympiad
At IMO 2025, an advanced Gemini Deep Think model (officially graded) and an experimental OpenAI reasoning model (graded by former medalists) each solved 5 of 6 problems for 35/42 points — gold-medal standard — working end-to-end in natural language within the 4.5-hour time limits.
Key facts
- OpenAI announced its result on 19 July 2025; Google DeepMind on 21 July 2025
- Both scored 35/42, solving 5 of 6 problems
- Google DeepMind's result was officially certified by IMO coordinators
- Natural-language proofs, no formal translation, within competition time limits
- Formal provers: Harmonic's Aristotle produced Lean-verified solutions to 5 of 6 problems (gold-equivalent; arXiv 2510.01346); ByteDance Seed-Prover got an IMO-certified 30 points in-contest and later completed P1–P5
- One year earlier, AlphaProof reached silver with formal Lean proofs and days of compute
Science result
- Field
- mathematics / olympiad problem solving
- Problem
- International Mathematical Olympiad 2025 problems
- Result
- Gemini Deep Think (officially graded) and an experimental OpenAI reasoning model each solved 5 of 6 problems for 35/42 — gold-medal standard — in natural language within the 4.5-hour limits.
- AI system
- Gemini Deep Think, OpenAI experimental reasoning model
- Human role
- Autonomous during the exam; no human help or formal translation
- Verification
- Gemini: certified by IMO coordinators; OpenAI: graded by three former IMO medallists (not officially coordinated)
- Status
- confirmed
- Why surprising
- In a 2021 public bet Paul Christiano put AI IMO gold by 2025 at under 10% and Eliezer Yudkowsky at about 16%; general-purpose LLMs did it without any formal tools.
What happened
Two general-purpose LLM reasoning systems achieved gold-medal scores at the world's top high-school math competition.
Why it matters
A long-standing AI grand challenge fell years earlier than many forecasters expected, showcasing the power of RL-trained reasoning.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
- 2026-09-29: added science block, Aristotle and Seed-Prover formal results; (science & math tab)
Related posts (1)
- OpenAI OpenAI @OpenAI · x · 2025-07-19
Cited as a source by: 2025-07-21-imo-gold-ai
Related events
- AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 reach IMO silver-medal standard ★★★★
- AI reaches gold-medal level at the ICPC World Finals ★★★★
- DeepSeekMath-V2: open-weights self-verifying prover reaches IMO 2025 gold level and 118/120 on Putnam 2024 ★★★★
- AxiomProver produces machine-checked Lean proofs for all 12 Putnam 2025 problems ★★★
Sources (5)
- officialAdvanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the IMO (Google DeepMind)
- officialOpenAI announcement on X
- pressOpenAI Model Earns Gold-Medal Score at International Math Olympiad (Scientific American)
- paperHarmonic Aristotle IMO 2025 paper (arXiv 2510.01346)
- officialByteDance Seed-Prover IMO 2025 result
id: 2025-07-21-imo-gold-ai · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline