OpenAI and Google DeepMind Outshine Students at World’s Top Coding Contest

OpenAI scored a flawless 12/12 and Google DeepMind struck gold at ICPC 2025, the world’s toughest programming contest for top university teams.

OpenAI and Google DeepMind have stunned the tech and academic world by dominating the 2025 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the world’s top university coding competition.

At the ICPC World Finals in Baku, Azerbaijan, OpenAI’s reasoning models delivered a perfect 12-for-12 score, while DeepMind’s Gemini 2.5 Deep Think hit gold-medal level by solving 10 of 12 problems, including one no human team cracked. The results mark the first time AI rivals have outperformed the globe’s best student programmers at the so-called “Olympics of programming”.

GPT-5 leads the way with first-try correct solutions

In a post on X, OpenAI confirmed its systems solved all 12 problems under the same strict five-hour rules as human teams.

GPT-5 handled the bulk ...