The K Prize: Popping the AI Coding Hype Bubble, One GitHub Issue at a Time

If you’ve been following the AI coding scene lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re living in a golden age of machine programmers. Benchmarks are being shattered, models are writing code like caffeinated interns, and every week brings a new headline about AI’s impending takeover of software engineering. But just as the party was getting wild, along comes the Laude Institute, Databricks, and Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski with the K Prize—a new AI coding challenge that’s less “Silicon Valley afterparty” and more “pop quiz you didn’t study for.” This challenge, which evaluates models on real, unseen GitHub issues, has exposed a sobering reality: the AI coding hype is built on some very shaky ground.

Let's take a deep dive into the K Prize, unpack what makes it different, and explore why its results.