International Mathematical Olympiad · Bath, July 2024
AlphaProof
An AI system that taught itself to prove mathematical theorems in Lean, reaching silver-medal performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad through continuous reinforcement learning.

- 28 / 42
- points at IMO 2024
- Silver
- medal standard
- First
- AI system to reach medal level
- P6
- hardest problem of the year, solved by five contestants
An agent that self-taught itself Mathematics in Lean and achieved a silver-medal standard in the International Math Olympiad. Starting from a pre-trained LLM exhibiting proficiency in mathematics, AlphaProof embarked on a lifelong Reinforcement Learning journey: proving and disproving theorems, learning from them, and getting better and better.
During the IMO competition, AlphaProof first invented variations of the competition problems and performed a second (test-time) Reinforcement Learning phase, where it tested these variations while attempting to prove the main problems. Over time, its comprehension improved, allowing it to solve all the number theory and algebra questions, including a P6 problem that only five human competitors managed to solve.
“The fact that the program can come up with a non-obvious construction like this is very impressive, and well beyond what I thought was state of the art.”
Publication
Olympiad-level formal mathematical reasoning with reinforcement learning
Hubert, Mehta, Sartran, Horváth, Zahavy, et al. · Nature, 12 November 2025
From the blog
How we achieved an IMO medal, one year before any other AI system
My account of AlphaProof: the lifelong RL loop that taught it mathematics in Lean, the test-time RL phase that let it crack Problem 6, and what the result does and doesn’t mean.
Coverage
The July 2024 announcement was reported widely; the solutions were graded by Timothy Gowers and Joseph Myers under IMO rules.
- NatureDeepMind hits milestone in solving maths problems — AI's next grand challengeDavide Castelvecchi · 25 July 2024
- The New York TimesMove Over, Mathematicians, Here Comes AlphaProofSiobhan Roberts · 25 July 2024
- MIT Technology ReviewGoogle DeepMind's new AI systems can now solve complex math problemsRhiannon Williams · 25 July 2024
- XThread on grading the solutionsTimothy Gowers · 25 July 2024
- Scientific AmericanAI Reaches Silver-Medal Level at This Year's Math OlympiadManon Bischoff · 6 August 2024
- Nature, News & ViewsMathematicians put AI model AlphaProof to the testTalia Ringer · 12 November 2025