The frontier of artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing into the complex domain of formal, rigorous reasoning. Today, ByteDance's Seed team has unveiled a significant leap forward in this field with the release of Seed Prover 1.5, a specialized model designed to generate and verify formal mathematical proofs. This new iteration demonstrates a remarkable ability to tackle problems ranging from elite high-school competitions to advanced graduate-level mathematics, signaling a potential paradigm shift in how machines can assist with and potentially automate deep mathematical research.
A New Benchmark in Automated Theorem Proving
ByteDance's Seed Prover 1.5 is not a general-purpose chatbot; it is a finely tuned engine for formal mathematical reasoning. Its core function is to take a mathematical statement and produce a complete, machine-verifiable proof written in the Lean programming language, a system used by mathematicians to ensure absolute logical correctness. The model's prowess was demonstrated on some of the most challenging public benchmarks. Most notably, it generated verifiable proofs for the first five problems of the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in just 16.5 hours. When scored against historical IMO standards, this performance translates to a score of 35 out of 42, a result that would have secured a gold medal in past competitions. This achievement alone marks a watershed moment for AI in formal mathematics.
Key Performance Benchmarks for Seed Prover 1.5:
| Benchmark | Description | Seed Prover 1.5 Performance | Result Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| IMO 2025 (P1-P5) | Top-tier high school math competition. | Generated verifiable proofs in 16.5 hours. | Score of 35/42, meeting historical Gold Medal standard. |
| Putnam 2025 | Premier undergraduate math competition in North America. | Solved 11 of 12 problems in 9 hours. | Demonstrates strong capability at the undergraduate elite level. |
| Putnam Historical | Full set of past Putnam problems. | Solved 88% of problems. | Establishes robust performance across diverse problem styles. |
| Fate-H | Represents Master's degree-level math difficulty. | Solved 80% of problems. | New State-of-the-Art (SOTA) for formal reasoning models. |
| Fate-X | Represents Doctoral degree-level math difficulty. | Solved 33% of problems. | New SOTA; demonstrates ability to tackle research-level problems. |
Scaling from Undergraduate to Doctoral Difficulty
The model's capabilities extend far beyond Olympiad problems. In a test against the prestigious Putnam Competition, a grueling exam for North American undergraduates, Seed Prover 1.5 solved 11 out of 12 problems from the 2025 contest in 9 hours. More systematically, it successfully solved 88% of problems across the entire historical Putnam dataset. To gauge its performance on advanced research-level mathematics, the team evaluated it on the Fate-H and Fate-X benchmarks, which represent the difficulty of master's and doctoral-level problems, respectively. Here, Seed Prover 1.5 solved 80% of the Fate-H problems and 33% of the exceptionally difficult Fate-X problems, setting new state-of-the-art records for formal reasoning models on these evaluations.
The Engine Behind the Breakthrough: Agentic Reinforcement Learning
The dramatic improvement over its predecessor is attributed to a novel training methodology described as "large-scale Agentic Reinforcement Learning (RL)." This approach goes beyond standard training on static datasets. Instead, the AI model acts as an autonomous "agent" that actively explores the vast search space of possible proof steps. It learns by attempting to construct proofs, receiving feedback on its success, and continuously refining its strategy. This iterative, self-improving process is key to developing the sophisticated, multi-step reasoning required for high-level mathematics, leading to significant gains in both the model's capability and its efficiency in finding proofs.
Core Technical Specifications:
- Primary Function: Automated theorem proving and formal mathematical reasoning.
- Output Format: Generates complete, machine-verifiable proof code in the Lean theorem prover.
- Key Training Innovation: Large-scale Agentic Reinforcement Learning (RL), enabling autonomous exploration and refinement of proof strategies.
- Availability: Technical report and proof code published on December 24, 2025. A public API is planned for future release.
- Developer: ByteDance Seed Team.
Implications and Future Accessibility
The release of Seed Prover 1.5, accompanied by a publicly available technical report and proof code, opens new avenues for collaboration between AI and human mathematicians. It can serve as a powerful assistant, checking the correctness of complex proofs, suggesting potential proof strategies, or exploring conjectures. ByteDance has announced plans to open an API for the model, which will allow researchers and developers to integrate this advanced reasoning capability into their own projects. As of the morning of December 24, 2025, this announcement positions ByteDance at the forefront of a critical and fast-evolving niche within AI research, with potential long-term implications for scientific discovery and verification.