Google Opens 85-Task Engineering Benchmark and Agent Competition

Google AI & Infrastructure announced on November 3, 2026 that it was releasing 29 public tasks, grading tools and an evaluation container for Physical-Engineering’s Last Exam (PLE), an 85-task engineering benchmark developed with Mercor, together with an open agent competition and leaderboard. PLE asks an agent to complete professional assignments in mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineering rather than answer textbook-style questions or make an isolated tool call.

The benchmark contains 30 mechanical, 27 electrical, 18 civil and 10 structural tasks, with success measured through deliverables that must satisfy engineering codes, physical constraints and, for design work, cost or performance objectives. The paper’s arXiv record lists an initial submission on October 21, 2026 and a revision on October 30, 2026. The new development is the public release of tasks and evaluation tooling and the opening of the competition, rather than the paper’s first publication.

Each assignment runs in a containerized project environment built on Mercor’s Archipelago. Tasks average 61 files and total 5,170 across the benchmark, spanning PDFs, spreadsheets, emails, 2D CAD drawings, 3D BIM models and superseded revisions. An…