That result would have given it first place if it were human, as the best college teams only solved eleven.
Google also participated with a custom Gemini 2.5 Deep Think and earned Gold status, solving 10 of the problems and finishing second, Google claims.
1/n
I’m really excited to share that our @OpenAI reasoning system got a perfect score of 12/12 during the 2025 ICPC World Finals, the premier collegiate programming competition where top university teams from around the world solve complex algorithmic problems. This would have… pic.twitter.com/MA5KQdIxCj— Mostafa Rohaninejad (@MostafaRohani) September 17, 2025
As for OpenAI’s effort, GPT-5 solved 11 of the problems on the first try, and left the hardest one to the same experimental model that won gold at the International Math Olympiad, which came up with a solution on the ninth attempt.
Truly international competition
The ICPC 2025 saw 73,083 students participate from 3,424 universities in 103 countries — with 140 teams qualifying for the final in Baku.
It is set up to solve complex algorithmic problems with a five-hour time limit, and both OpenAI and Gemini followed the same set of rules as the human university teams.
OpenAI says they did not train the models used specifically for the tests, and that the GPT-5 model used was not primed for the ICPC.
Novel model from Google
Google, on their hand, are not so clear, saying instead that they used «an advanced version» of Deep Think — and hailing their «breakthroughs» in «pre-training and post-training,» and «novel reinforcement learning techniques.»
Google says the «innovations» from this version of the model will be baked into «future versions of Deep Think.»
Having won gold at the International Math Olympiad (along with Google) and now winning the ICPC, OpenAI’s Mostafa Rohaninejad says «The next frontier is the discovery of new knowledge, which is the true milestone at the end of the day.»
Read more: OpenAI’s x.com thread, and Google’s thread with blog announcement. Discussion on r/Singularity. More on the ICPC in Baku