OpenAI’s AI takes second place at Global Programming Championship

At the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 in Tokyo, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence system, OpenAIAHC, secured second place — narrowly beaten by Polish programmer Przemysław Dębiak (competing under the name “Psyho”).

The competition focused on heuristic problem-solving and brought together 12 of the world’s top competitive programmers, selected based on their 2024 results. OpenAIAHC delivered a remarkable performance, scoring 42 billion points — just 9.5% behind the winner.

For most of the 10-hour final, the AI was in the lead, showcasing rapid prototyping capabilities and superior optimization. But in the final stretch, Dębiak pulled ahead with more creative and unconventional solutions that the model couldn’t match.

“While the AI surpassed humans in terms of optimization ability, we believe it still fell short of human creativity,” tournament organizers said.

Dębiak, who described the showdown as “Humanity has prevailed (for now!),” said the event was exhausting — he reportedly slept just 10 hours over three days and relied only on the basic functionality of VS Code, with no AI assistance.

OpenAIAHC’s performance stunned observers: no AI system had ever placed this high in a major global programming competition. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman congratulated the winner on X, writing, “good job psyho,” and added, “Our model took 2nd place at the AtCoder Heuristics World Finals! Congrats to the champion for holding us off this time.”