Gemini 2.5 Deep Think — an improved version of Google's flagship artificial intelligence model that uses advanced reasoning capabilities to break down problems into multiple components — won the gold medal at the 2025 International Student Programming Contest (ICPC) Global Finals.
Gemini 2.5 Deep Think — an improved version of Google's flagship artificial intelligence model that uses advanced reasoning capabilities to break down problems into multiple components — won the gold medal at the 2025 International Student Programming Contest (ICPC) Global Finals.
ICPC is considered the world's most prestigious and challenging coding competition for university students. This year's final, held on September 4 in Baku, Azerbaijan, featured teams from nearly 3,000 universities representing 103 countries. Each team had to solve a set of challenging problems in five hours. Points are awarded only for perfect answers, writes ZDNET.
Gemini correctly solved 10 of 12 problems, reaching the gold medal level and placing second overall among human participants.
Google's AI quickly and correctly solved one of the 12 problems in the competition, which left all participants in a deadlock. On the other hand, there were two problems that it failed to solve, but which other teams successfully solved.
The third task, Task C, required participants to devise a solution for distributing fluid through a system of interconnected channels such that the reservoirs attached to each channel filled as quickly as possible. Each channel could be closed, open, or partially open, creating an infinite number of possible configurations.
In its search for the optimal configuration, Gemini took an unexpected approach: it first assigned each tank a numerical value to determine its priority over the others. The model then used an algorithm and a concept from game theory known as the minimax theorem to find a solution.
The entire process took less than half an hour. None of the human participants were able to solve this problem.
Google believes Gemini's success at ICPC 2025 has far deeper implications than just winning a programming competition.
“The skills required to participate in ICPC — understanding a complex problem, developing a multi-step logical plan, and implementing it flawlessly — are the same skills required in many scientific and engineering fields, such as developing new drugs or microcircuits,” the company wrote in its blog.
Recall thatin July, Google DeepMind and OpenAI artificial intelligence models won gold medals at the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) , which was attended by 630 high school students from different countries.
