For the first time, artificial intelligence has achieved a perfect score at the world’s most prestigious mathematics contest, the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). Two Chinese tech companies, Huawei and Xiaohongshu, announced that their AI models each scored 100 percent on the questions given to human contestants at this month’s IMO. They were the first AI labs to disclose their results, but other labs worldwide may follow in the coming days.
AI Matches Human Performance at IMO
“We are delighted with this result, because achieving a perfect score at the IMO is extremely challenging. Previously, no large language model had ever achieved a perfect score under the IMO’s official judging process,” Xiaohongshu said in a statement. In 2025, models from Google and OpenAI reached gold-level scores for the first time but could not match the five human contestants who achieved 100 percent.
Details of the 2026 IMO
This year, 666 contestants from different countries participated in Shanghai. Only seven of them achieved full marks, according to the official IMO scoreboard. Participants at the IMO, held in different locations each year, must be aged under 20. Huawei said its AI system “Celia” demonstrated “comprehensive problem-solving capabilities” across several mathematical fields. Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote in English, said its model “dots-note-3.0” entered the IMO for the first time this year.
No Human Intervention During Testing
Tech firms were provided with the IMO problems only after human contestants had taken the exam, and their submissions were required within a specified time limit. “During testing, any form of human intervention was strictly prohibited,” Xiaohongshu added. AI’s progress has been rapid: at the 2024 IMO, Google achieved a silver-medal score, solving four of the six problems over two to three days.
Industry Reaction
Deedy Das, a partner at the US-based investment firm Menlo Ventures, said he had given this year’s IMO questions to four cutting-edge AI models. All four — from leading US labs OpenAI and Anthropic, the startup Axiom Math, and “Kimi K3” from China’s Moonshot AI — scored 42 points out of 42. This achievement marks a significant milestone in AI’s mathematical reasoning capabilities, matching the top human performers for the first time.
