Finance's biggest UK taxpayer has a $10m math problem for you to solve
Alex Gerko, formerly a Russian citizen and Britain’s biggest single taxpayer, is known for his love of the environment. He also likes mathematics. XTX Markets, the electronic trading firm that Gerko founded in 2015, also likes mathematics – and is willing to pay if you like mathematics, too.
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Back in 2023, the firm launched a prize. The AI Mathematical Olympiad (AIMO) is a “challenge fund” that was launched by XTX Markets in 2023 to encourage the development of AI models that can perform mathematics. The “grand” prize, for $5m, “will be awarded to the first AI model to enter an AIMO Prize approved competition and perform at a standard equivalent to a gold medal in the [International Mathematical Olympiad],” according to AIMO’s website.
There are also $5m in “progress prizes” for milestones on the road to this AI model. The first was for $1.048m, and given in 2024 to “Project Numina”, a Mistral AI-backed project. The second was for $2.1m, and also given in 2024 to an Nvidia team. The third progress prize, with a $2.2m prize pot, launched...yesterday.
This third competition is the toughest one yet, featuring “significantly increased problem difficulty,” as well as “industry-leading compute resources”. Prizes for first to fifth place range from $262k to $16k, and there are a host of other smaller prizes on offer.
Fancy giving it a shot? Entries are now being accepted. You can find more details on the competition’s Kaggle page. The entry deadline is the 8th of April 2025, and the final submission deadline is the 15th of April.
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