Maybe I'm mis-reading the paper, but my interpretation was that the algorithm discovered using a reward which scales with HW performance matches the theoretical

Maybe I'm mis-reading the paper, but my interpretation was that the algorithm discovered using a reward which scales with HW performance matches the theoretical complexity of Strassen, but is more performant on the HW. They also identified algorithms which do fewer matrix multiplications than Strassen, improving the lower bound of matrix multiplies required (They highlight this in Fig 3). In that light, I thought their claim was fair. They've discovered (different) algorithms which are both theoretically and practically better than Strassen's.