You know the ICPC, the International Collegiate Programming Contest? It’s an annual academic bloodsport where the brightest college coders on the planet cram into hotel ballrooms and try to outsmart the universe in five hours flat? Well, this year, the real winner didn’t need snacks, bathroom breaks, or sleep.
OpenAI showed up with a bundle of reasoning models and walked out with a perfect score.
Twelve problems. Twelve correct solutions. No retakes. No mercy.
The best human team—three Russian kids from St. Petersburg State—managed eleven. They squeaked out their final solve with two minutes to spare. A hell of a run… until a bundle of silicon and math casually aced the entire set under the same time limit. Just vibes and voltage.
And it wasn’t just OpenAI strutting across the stage—Google’s Gemini 2.5 threw its hat in the ring too. Crushed ten out of twelve, eight of them in under 45 minutes. Even knocked out Problem C—a mind-mangler about duct flow and priority theory—that left every human team stumped and staring.
Let’s be clear:
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No custom tuning.
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No contest-specific training.
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No unfair head start.
Just raw reasoning models, like the ones that help you debug code or plan a dinner party, casually obliterating the best coders academia could muster.
It’s like watching Deep Blue beat Kasparov again, except this time it’s the entire graduating class of 2035 getting pantsed by artificial intelligence. For the first time we now have hard evidence—undeniable and quantifiable—that AI had surpassed the best human minds in programming.
What’s wild? This is just the warmup. OpenAI says the real challenge isn’t five-hour contests—it’s the long game: multi-month, open-ended scientific discovery. Think lab coats and Nobel dreams, except your research assistant doesn’t sleep and can read every paper ever written by lunch.
And the kicker? One of the folks who helped build the AI this year—Borys Minaiev—was on the last team to ever go perfect at ICPC in 2015. He’s come full circle: built the thing that beat him.
Progress, folks. Fast, ruthless, and maybe just a little bit smug.
The nerds aren’t obsolete yet. But the machines just lapped them. Twice.