---
id: "2024-12-20-frontiermath-o3-25-percent"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-12-20-frontiermath-o3-25-percent/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2024-12-20"
date_precision: day
category: science
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Disputed]
verification: Expert-checked
sources: 3
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-12-20-frontiermath-o3-25-percent/

# OpenAI o3 scores 25% on FrontierMath research-level maths benchmark, amid funding disclosure controversy

Epoch AI's FrontierMath (Nov 2024) contains unpublished research-level problems on which models scored under 2%. On 20 Dec 2024 OpenAI claimed 25.2% for o3. It then emerged that OpenAI had funded the benchmark and had access to most problems. Released o3 scored lower in independent tests.

## Key facts
- FrontierMath paper v1: 7 Nov 2024; prior models <2%
- o3 claimed 25.2% (aggressive test-time compute setting) on 20 Dec 2024
- OpenAI's funding and data access disclosed only in paper v5 (20 Dec 2024); Epoch said it should have been more transparent
- Later records: Gemini 3 Pro 38% (Tiers 1-3) and 19% (Tier 4) in Nov 2025; GPT-5.2 Pro 31% on Tier 4 in Jan 2026

## What happened

OpenAI previewed o3 with a headline FrontierMath score an order of magnitude above prior models. The benchmark's independence was then questioned when OpenAI's funding and access came to light.

## Why it matters

It was the first sign that research-level maths was yielding to reasoning models, and an early lesson in benchmark governance and conflicts of interest.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Epoch AI: OpenAI and FrontierMath](https://epoch.ai/latest/openai-and-frontiermath) (epoch.ai, official)
2. [The Decoder: OpenAI quietly funded independent math benchmark](https://the-decoder.com/openai-quietly-funded-independent-math-benchmark-before-setting-record-with-o3/) (the-decoder.com, press)
3. [TechRepublic: independent FrontierMath score for o3](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-openai-generative-ai-models-frontiermath-score/) (techrepublic.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-05-09: [Google DeepMind's 'AI co-mathematician' sets FrontierMath Tier 4 record and helps resolve a Kourovka Notebook problem](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-05-09-deepmind-ai-co-mathematician/index.md)
- 2024-12-20: [OpenAI announces o3, scoring 75.7–87.5% on ARC-AGI](https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-12-20-openai-o3/index.md)
- People: [Terence Tao](https://postcutoff.com/person/terence-tao/)