Discoveries / theoretical-computer-science

The Matrix Multiplication Exponent

A record, not a resolution, and a small one by design. The bound moves from $2.371339$ to $2.371177$, about $1.6 \times 10^{-4}$, and the authors describe it as a small step. Whether $\omega = 2$ is untouched, and nothing here suggests the laser method can reach it. The interesting claim is methodological rather than numerical. The bottleneck in this line of work is a hard optimization problem, and the paper reports progress by reformulating that problem and then improving the optimizer, with AlphaEvolve doing the final refinement. That is a different kind of contribution from a new mathematical identity, and it is why the entry is filed as computation.