OpenAI’s o3 model comes down like a rocket on Musk’s Grok in AI chess tournament

OpenAI’s o3 model has defeated Elon Musk’s Grok AI in the final of an artificial intelligence chess tournament hosted on Google’s Kaggle platform. The victory adds another layer to the ongoing rivalry between OpenAI and xAI, with both companies’ founders claiming to have developed the world’s smartest AI models.

What you should know: Eight major AI language models competed in the three-day tournament, testing their strategic reasoning abilities through chess rather than their typical text-generation tasks.

• OpenAI’s o3 model remained unbeaten throughout the tournament and secured victory against xAI’s Grok 4 in the final match.
• Google’s Gemini model claimed third place after defeating a different OpenAI model in the semi-finals.
• The competition featured AI systems from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI, and Chinese developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.

The big picture: Tech companies have historically used chess as a benchmark for artificial intelligence capabilities, but this tournament marked a shift toward testing general-purpose AI models rather than specialized chess programs.

• Unlike Deep Blue’s famous 1997 victory over Garry Kasparov or DeepMind’s AlphaGo achievements, this competition involved AI systems designed for everyday tasks attempting to master chess strategy.
• The tournament serves as a proxy for measuring reasoning and strategic thinking capabilities across different AI platforms.

Grok’s downfall: Despite strong early performance, xAI’s model made critical errors in the final rounds that cost it the championship.

• “Up until the semi finals, it seemed like nothing would be able to stop Grok 4 on its way to winning the event,” Pedro Pinhata from Chess.com noted in tournament coverage.
• Grok repeatedly lost its queen and made what observers called “unrecognizable” and “blundering” moves during the final games.
• Chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura observed during his livestream: “Grok made so many mistakes in these games, but OpenAI did not.”

What they’re saying: Elon Musk downplayed the significance of his AI’s early success before the final defeat.

• Before Thursday’s final, Musk posted on X that xAI’s tournament performance had been a “side effect” and the company “spent almost no effort on chess.”
• Pinhata described how “the illusion fell through on the last day of the tournament” as Grok’s play deteriorated significantly.

Why chess matters for AI: Strategic games like chess and Go serve as important benchmarks for evaluating artificial intelligence reasoning capabilities.

• AI developers use these tests to examine their models’ skills in areas such as strategic planning, pattern recognition, and outcome optimization.
• The tournament took place on Kaggle, Google’s platform that allows data scientists to evaluate their systems through competitive challenges.
• Historical precedents include DeepMind’s AlphaGo victories against human Go champions in the late 2010s, which led South Korean master Lee Se-dol to retire, saying “There is an entity that cannot be defeated.”