OpenAI logo, creators of o1

OpenAI o1: Reasoning Models

Research BreakthroughsGenerative AI Revolution
Impact

What Happened

OpenAI released o1, a model trained to 'think before it speaks' using chain-of-thought reasoning at inference time. It could solve complex math, coding, and science problems by spending more compute thinking through multi-step solutions — trading speed for accuracy on hard problems.

Why It Mattered

Introduced a new paradigm: test-time compute scaling. Instead of just making models bigger, you could make them smarter by letting them think longer. Achieved PhD-level performance on scientific reasoning benchmarks.

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Part of the Generative AI Revolution (2022–2024) era · Browse all research breakthroughs · View all 2024 milestones

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