Open-source AI crushes elite math exam

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Remember when AI couldn’t handle basic arithmetic? Now, a small open-source model is crushing one in every of the world’s hardest math exams.

After achieving top scores within the Putnam Contest, Nous Research’s Nomos-1 joins a protracted list of AI-driven math advances this yr that show the sector could also be about to maneuver into a complete recent territory of discovery.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Nous Research’s AI takes on elite math exam

• Microsoft maps how people use Copilot

• Fix bugs and ship features from Slack with Claude Code

• AI ring gives ‘external memory’ on your brain

• 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

NOUS RESEARCH

📈 Nous Research’s AI takes on elite math exam

The Rundown: Nous Research just open-sourced Nomos 1, a brand new 30B parameter reasoning system that scored 87 out of 120 on the 2025 Putnam Contest — crushing rivals like Qwen 3 on probably the most prestigious collegiate math competitions.

The main points:

• The system uses a two-phase approach: AI ‘staff’ solve and self-critique responses, with a tournament-style bracket then choosing the very best submission.

• Nomos’ rating would have placed second amongst nearly 4,000 human competitors last yr, with the model earning eight perfect problem scores.

• Nous also released and open-sourced a reasoning harness — orchestration code that manages how the model solves problems.

• Running Qwen3 through the identical harness and setup scored just 24/120, with the result showing gains coming from model training quite than the harness.

Why it matters: Not too way back, even basic math problems were a difficulty for top AI systems —  and now, a small, open model is taking down a notoriously difficult exam. Between Nomos, AI helping conquer unsolved problems, and labs coming with gold medal-winning math models, all the field looks ready for an AI-driven boom.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

🔐 Get AI compliance ready for 2026

The Rundown: AI has unlocked recent velocity for startups — and recent visibility, too. The faster you grow, the earlier you’ll must prove you’re secure enough to play with enterprise customers. Join Vanta for a live session on the best way to make compliance work at your pace, without slowing momentum, stalling deals, or putting revenue in danger.

You’ll walk away with:

• Recommendations on identifying the proper framework(s) on your startup

• Advice on the best way to work security into your budget

• Security best practices to implement now so that you’re audit-ready next yr

• Essential steps to earn customer trust (and deals)

Register today.

AI RESEARCH

🗺️ Microsoft maps how people use Copilot

The Rundown: Microsoft just published recent research analyzing 37.5M Copilot conversations from the past yr, revealing distinct behavioral patterns in how users engage with the AI assistant across different devices, time periods, and topics.

The main points:

• Health and wellness queries dominated mobile use no matter hour or month, positioning phones as around-the-clock personal wellness companions.

• Advice-seeking grew all year long, with users increasingly treating AI as a guidance source quite than simply a pure search tool.

• Late-night sessions saw philosophical, religious, and existential topics climb in popularity, while relationship chats spiked specifically around Valentine’s Day.

• Programming dominated in January, while social topics rose later within the yr, reflecting a shift from early adopters toward a broader, mainstream audience.

Why it matters: There was a wealth of knowledge from major labs on how users are leveraging AI, but this Microsoft study gives an interesting have a look at the shifting dynamics that occur based on each the time of day and yr, and the device getting used — insights that may shape how next-gen assistants adapt and optimize for context.

AI TRAINING

👨‍💻 Fix bugs and ship features from Slack with Claude Code

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the best way to add Claude Code to your Slack and task the autonomous coding assistant with fixing bugs or implementing recent features, without ever opening a code editor.

Step-by-step:

1. Connect Claude Code to GitHub here and add the Claude app to your Slack workspace here.

2. You must see it in the underside left of your Slack now. Click “Connect Account” and provides Claude access to Slack.

3. Add Claude to an existing channel or to a brand new one by typing “@claude” and hitting enter. It’s going to ask you so as to add Claude to the channel. Approve it.

4. You may now @Claude and provides it coding tasks, with the assistant constructing context based on recent messages.

Pro tip: Start a Slack thread on a selected issue for the very best performance. Moreover, you may also now access Claude Code on mobile via the Slack app.

PRESENTED BY GURU

🧠 Your AI source of truth

The Rundown: Guru is the AI Source of Truth that connects all your company’s tools and delivers cited, permission-aware answers all over the place you’re employed. With one governed knowledge layer powering each your people and your AIs, teams move faster — with fewer blind spots and mistakes.

Guru means that you can:

• Connect all knowledge with permission-aware access

• Get trusted, cited answers in chat and all over the place else you’re employed

• Experience knowledge that improves and verifies itself

Learn more about Guru. 

AI WEARABLES

💍 AI ring gives ‘external memory’ on your brain

The Rundown: Pebble maker Core Devices just introduced the Index 01, a brand new $75 AI smart ring voice recorder that captures spoken ideas and uses on-device AI to show them into notes, reminders, or calendar entries, without subscriptions or web.

The main points:

• The ring matches on a user’s index finger with a thumb-activated button, allowing for hands-free recording while on the move.

• Recordings sync to a user’s phone, where an area LLM transcribes and processes the voice note via an open-source speech-to-text system.

• The ring requires no charging, with batteries lasting as much as two years of typical use, and may record as much as five minutes of continuous audio.

Why it matters: After wearables just like the Humane Pin and Rabbit R1 stumbled trying to switch phones with AI hardware, Index 01 is taking a narrower approach — a single, walk in the park executed reliably. It’s actually no guaranteed success, nevertheless it might reveal whether the device market has room for focused tools vs. mass-market moonshots.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧑‍💻 Devstral 2 – Mistral’s next-gen family of coding-focused models

• 💡 Stitch – Google’s tool to show ideas into UI designs, now using Gemini 3

• 🧮 Nomos 1 – Nous Research’s powerful AI math reasoning system

• 🧠 Purpose – AI mentor for deep, personalized guidance on demand

📰 The whole lot else in AI today

Just launched: Coder now provides full-stack infrastructure for governed AI development at scale. Learn more about AI Bridge, Agent Boundaries, and Coder Tasks.*

The U.S.’ annual defense bill reportedly mandates the creation of a committee to review the military impacts of AGI and countermeasures to adversaries pursuing it.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is reportedly developing its next AI model using 1000’s of illegally imported Nvidia chips, in keeping with The Information.

McDonald’s Netherlands pulled an AI-created Christmas ad after facing backlash, saying the response “serves as a very important learning as we explore effective use of AI.”

Amazon and Microsoft each announced major AI and cloud infrastructure investments in India, collectively pledging over $52B.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Courtney P. in Sylvan Lake, MI:

“My daughter is a freshman in highschool and has big dreams of playing field hockey on the collegiate level. I created a GPT in ChatGPT that acts as a school recruiting coach for her that can provide her every thing from coaching, training workouts, nutrition suggestions, mindset coaching, to which clinics are the very best to be at to get in front of coaches.

We’ve saved 1000’s of dollars at this point from having to rent an out of doors recruiter coach just by me spending a couple of hours to create this data base for her!”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Microsoft’s cancer-mapping AI

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Neuralink co-founder’s wild next act

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Trump’s next big move: robots

• Today’s AI tool guide: Fix and ship from Slack with Claude Code

• RSVP to next workshop @ 4PM EST Friday: AI Automations Made Easy

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown