ByteDance’s Seed-Thinking-v1.5 is making waves in the AI world, and for good reason. This new reasoning model, built with reinforcement learning, is showing off some serious brainpower, hitting impressive scores like 86.7% on AIME 2024, 55% on Codeforces, and 77.3% on GPQA. It’s not just a STEM nerd either it’s got range, beating DeepSeek R1 by 8% on non-reasoning tasks. Here’s why this model is worth your attention.

At its core, Seed-Thinking-v1.5 is designed to think before it answers, mimicking a more human-like approach to problem-solving. Unlike traditional models that spit out responses on reflex, this one pauses to reason, and the results speak for themselves. It’s a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model, which means it’s efficient running on 20B activated parameters out of a 200B total. That’s lean for a model packing this kind of punch.

The numbers are what really pop. On math benchmarks like AIME 2024, it’s scoring 86.7%, neck-and-neck with heavyweights like Gemini 2.5 Pro (92%). In coding, it’s hitting 55% on Codeforces pass@8, and for science, it’s pulling 77.3% on GPQA’s tough diamond set. Even outside its comfort zone, it’s no slouch, 87.4% on IFEval for instruction-following and 73.1% on Collie for general tasks.

Standing Out in a Crowded Field

So how does it stack up against the competition? Seed-Thinking-v1.5 isn’t just keeping pace, it’s outshining some big names in specific areas. Compared to DeepSeek R1, it’s consistently better across math, science, and coding. Against OpenAI’s o3-mini, it holds its own, though it trails slightly in areas like LiveCodeBench (64.9% vs. 74.1%). Gemini 2.5 Pro often takes the crown, but Seed-Thinking-v1.5 is nipping at its heels, especially considering its smaller size.

Yeah, it’s only at 12.9% on tasks like SimpleQA, way behind Gemini’s 52.9%. But that’s refreshing in a way, it shows where there’s room to grow, and the team behind it isn’t hiding the weak spots.

ByteDance is also dropping two new benchmarks, BeyondAIME and Codeforces, to keep pushing the field forward. That’s a win for researchers and developers everywhere.

For businesses, this could be an addition to your AI tools for coding, data analysis, or even creative tasks, without breaking the bank on hardware. For the rest of us, it’s a glimpse at AI that doesn’t just parrot answers but actually thinks and that’s a little exciting.

Looking forward

The full scoop is in their technical report, and those new benchmarks are coming soon. If you’re into AI that can reason like a pro, keep an eye on Seed-Thinking-v1.5. It’s not perfect, but it’s raising the bar, and we’re here for it.