OpenAI's o3 beats Elon Musk's Grok in AI chess championship
OpenAI's o3 just swept Elon Musk's Grok 4 with a 4-0 win in a high-stakes AI chess tournament on Google's Kaggle.
The three-day event brought together top AI models from OpenAI, xAI, Google, and Anthropic to see how well they could handle real strategic thinking—no special chess training involved.
Grok 4 falters in finals
Grok 4 came in strong but slipped up big time in the finals, losing its queen more than once.
Chess legend Magnus Carlsen, alongside David Howell, livestreamed the action, pointing out Grok's odd mistakes while o3 stayed sharp.
Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro grabbed third place after edging out another OpenAI model.
A look at the tournament
Chess is a classic test for brains—human or artificial—so seeing these AIs battle it out shows just how far general-purpose AI has come.
None of these bots were built just for chess, making their performance a solid peek at what modern AI can do when faced with tough problems.