OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has claimed the championship in an international tournament held to determine the world’s best artificial intelligence (AI) chess player. In a thrilling final match, OpenAI’s AI model Othri defeated Elon Musk’s AI model Grok 4, securing the title.
Chess has long been regarded as a benchmark for evaluating the capabilities of computers. Modern chess software can easily defeat even the world’s top human players. However, this year’s competition was unique—the AI models participating were not specifically designed for chess but rather created for general daily use.
Throughout the tournament, OpenAI’s Othri remained undefeated and ultimately triumphed over Musk’s Grok 4 in the final, intensifying the ongoing rivalry between the two companies.
Both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk have claimed that their latest AI models are the world’s most advanced. Google’s AI model Gemini secured third place after defeating another OpenAI model.
Pedro Pinhata, a reporter for Chess.com, commented, “Until the semifinals, it seemed no one could stop Grok 4. Despite some weak moments, XAI’s AI was the strongest player. But that notion changed on the final day, when Othri capitalized on Grok’s mistakes to secure consecutive wins.”
Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, commenting during a live broadcast, noted, “Grok made many errors, but OpenAI’s model made none.”
The competition took place on Kaggle, a platform owned by Google where data scientists test and evaluate their systems through various contests. The three-day tournament featured eight major language models, including those from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and XAI, as well as China’s DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.
AI developers typically use “benchmark” tests to evaluate a model’s reasoning, strategy, and programming skills. Complex, rule-based games like chess serve as ideal tests of a model’s ability to achieve goals, such as defeating an opponent.
Google’s AI lab DeepMind made headlines in the late 2010s with AlphaGo, which defeated human champions in the game of Go—a feat that drew widespread attention. DeepMind co-founder Sir Demis Hassabis was himself once a chess prodigy. Meanwhile, in 1997, IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue famously defeated then-world chess champion Garry Kasparov, shaking the technology world.
