AI defeats all programmers at international tournament

By Alimat Aliyeva

For the first time in history, an artificial intelligence system has won a major international real-time programming competition, Azernews reports.

Representatives of the Japanese startup Sakana AI and their AI agent ALE-Agent took first place at the AtCoder Heuristic Contest 058 (AHC058), outperforming 804 professional programmers.

The four-hour tournament was held on the AtCoder platform, one of the world’s leading arenas for algorithmic competitions. Participants were challenged to develop a program capable of finding the most effective approximate solution to a complex optimization problem simulating a hierarchical production process under strict time limits.

ALE-Agent began submitting solutions just two hours after the contest started and quickly surged to the top of the leaderboard. Up until the final stage, it was neck-and-neck with one of the platform’s strongest human competitors, known by the handle yosupo, before ultimately securing a decisive victory.

What set ALE-Agent apart was its original algorithmic approach, not anticipated by the contest designers. Rather than relying on standard heuristics, the AI employed the “virtual capacity” method, which evaluates the potential efficiency of production elements not yet deployed. This innovative strategy helped avoid local optima and significantly improved the final results.

According to Sakana AI, participating in the contest cost roughly $1,300, primarily for API calls to the GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro models that power ALE-Agent.

Founded in 2023 by former researchers from Google Brain and Stability AI, Sakana AI is now valued at $2.65 billion, making it Japan’s most valuable startup. Experts say ALE-Agent’s triumph marks a historic milestone for autonomous AI systems, demonstrating that they can tackle complex engineering challenges in real time—tasks previously thought to require human ingenuity.

Sakana AI hinted that ALE-Agent’s success could pave the way for AI systems that not only compete with humans in coding but also co-design industrial processes, optimize supply chains, and even assist in real-time strategic decision-making for manufacturing—potentially transforming how industries operate in the next decade.