Rist Kaggle Team Achieves Remarkable Success
The Rist Kaggle Team, comprising esteemed Kaggle Grandmasters such as Takeshi Takenouchi, Chen Jian, and Liu Shuozhi, has proudly secured a gold medal in the recent "Drawing with LLMs" competition held on the renowned Kaggle platform. This achievement is significant as it showcases their exceptional capabilities and innovations in the field of data analysis and AI.
Overview of the Competition
The Kaggle competition, titled "Drawing with LLMs", took place from February 26, 2025, to May 28, 2025. The challenge required participants to generate SVG code that accurately reflects a given text prompt. The competition attracted 1,725 participants and 1,309 teams, with the Rist team finishing in an impressive 6th place overall, ultimately earning them a coveted gold medal.
Comments from Kaggle Grandmasters
Takeshi Takenouchi
Takeshi shared insights on the complexity faced during the competition. He noted that due to the nature of the evaluation metrics, there were unique approaches that participants could adopt. This made interpreting the scores of the top teams particularly challenging. Unlike straightforward tasks, they had to integrate multiple technologies to formulate an effective pipeline. Despite the complexity, he expressed immense satisfaction in developing a finely-tuned pipeline that managed to create visually appealing SVG files, all within a remarkably compact file size of 10,000 bytes.
Takeshi also emphasized how the competition broadened his understanding of various image generation models, including diffusion models, and highlighted the potential applications of combining image generation with SVG in real-world tasks such as logo and icon development.
Chen Jian
Chen described the competition as experimental, underscoring the poorly designed metrics and frustrating debugging processes involved in the new submission format. However, he emphasized that the team found enjoyment through collaboration, which allowed them to glean invaluable insights about open-source text-to-image models. His teammates played pivotal roles in data generation and SVG translation strategies, contributing greatly to their success in maintaining a position among the gold medal contenders.
Liu Shuozhi
Liu reflected on the experimental nature of the competition, citing challenges such as evaluation metrics and debugging difficulties. He pursued innovative solutions, investigating the potential of large language models (LLMs) alongside traditional approaches. His attempts at fine-tuning LLMs with reinforcement learning proved beneficial, although he ultimately chose not to submit this approach due to scoring constraints. He regarded the competition as a unique opportunity to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different models.
About Kaggle
Kaggle is globally recognized as one of the largest data analysis platforms, boasting over 24 million registered users. It invites participants, known as Kaggler, to engage in competitions structured around real-world data challenges posed by various organizations. Participants are ranked from Novice to Master levels, with the highest rank being Kaggle Grandmaster, a prestigious title reserved for only 363 individuals worldwide as of June 2025.
The Rist Kaggle Team
Since 2020, Rist has actively recruited exceptional Kaggler talent through its "Kaggle hiring program," resulting in the formation of the Rist Kaggle Team, which currently includes 10 Kaggle Grandmasters and 2 Kaggle Masters. They focus on high-difficulty data analytics, AI-driven solutions, and product development.
Company Background
Founded in 2016, 株式会社Rist focuses on leveraging AI technology to support digital transformation and research and development efforts. They offer consulting services on AI utilization and imaging and supply wide-ranging solutions in response to various challenges and customer needs in different industries.
For further information about Rist, you can visit
Rist's official website.
This article is a summary of the achievements of the Rist Kaggle Team, detailing their journey in the Drawing with LLMs competition and their contributions to the field of data analysis and AI.