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Benefit Ledger · provisional · Computer Science

AlphaEvolve reports a rank-48 4x4 complex matrix-multiplication tensor and Google infrastructure tweaks

DeepMind’s Gemini-powered AlphaEvolve evolutionary coding agent, announced in May 2025, reported a rank-48 decomposition for 4×4 complex matrix multiplication and internal data-center and training-kernel changes.

14 May 2025Tier 3 MajorMethodology 0.1

Current score

+0.88

10 base · Major (tier 3 of 5, 10 pts)
× 0.8000 attribution · Primary causal contribution
× 0.3500 evidence · Technical disclosure or preprint
× 0.5000 realization · Experimentally validated
× 0.7000 durability
Event-level product before credit split: 0.98

A genuine algorithmic record, if the tensor claim holds, is major (tier 3). Attribution is high but human evaluators and existing search matter. Evidence is preprint/developer disclosure (0.35). Realization is demonstrated internally and in released notebooks. Status is provisional pending broader formal writeup.

What happened

On 14 May 2025 DeepMind described AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary loop over Gemini-generated code edits with automatic evaluators. The white paper and later arXiv preprint claimed a rank-48 tensor decomposition for 4×4 complex matrix multiplication, improving on Strassen’s rank-49 recursive scheme in that setting, plus scheduling and kernel changes used inside Google. Terence Tao publicly noted that the blog oversimplified the distinction between a tensor decomposition and an arbitrary 48-multiplication algorithm. Evidence remains a developer paper plus expert commentary, not a journal article.

Model attribution

+0.88

Gemini

Generated code mutations inside AlphaEvolve’s evolutionary loop.

Gemini is the stated generator; humans designed the loop and evaluators.

Attribution 0.8000 · Credit share 90% · Google DeepMind

Claims

  • AlphaEvolve found a rank-48 tensor decomposition for 4×4 complex matrix multiplication.

    outcome · supported

  • This was the first algorithm that multiplies 4×4 matrices with 48 scalar multiplications in every sense of the phrase.

    significance · disputed

Sources

primary sources

independent sources

Secondary domains: Mathematics

Revision history

  • 13 Sep 2026 · 0.00 0.88

    Initial adjudicated seed score under methodology 0.1.