GPT-5.2 is Here: The New King of Reasoning?
Oscar Gallo
Published on February 4, 2025
Just when we thought the AI wars had settled down, OpenAI has dropped a massive update. GPT-5.2 is officially out, and it’s not just a minor version bump. With significant improvements in reasoning, visual understanding, and economic task execution, this model is claiming the state-of-the-art crown across nearly every major benchmark.
From incredible physics simulations to acing the hardest math competitions, here is everything you need to know about GPT-5.2.
The "Wow" Factor: Physics and Shaders
Before we dive into the data, the visual demos for this model are stunning. The community has already put 5.2 to the test with complex visual tasks that previous models struggled with.
1. The Hexagon Test
Flavio Adamo ran his famous "bouncing balls in a hexagon" test, and GPT-5.2 took it to another level. It generated a 3D, realistic-looking hexagon with balls that obey complex physics, bounce off each other, and even light up on impact. The lighting and physics engine, generated entirely by code, look nearly indistinguishable from a human-made render.
2. Infinite Neo-Gothic City
Ethan Mollick prompted the model to create a "visually interesting shader... like an infinite city of neo-gothic towers partially drowned in a stormy ocean."
The result? A single-shot generation of an endless, low-poly city with realistic water physics and massive waves. It’s an impressive display of 5.2's ability to handle complex creative coding prompts instantly.
The Benchmarks: A New State of the Art
OpenAI has released comprehensive benchmarks comparing GPT-5.2 Thinking against GPT-5.1 Thinking, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro. The results show OpenAI taking a commanding lead.
Key Benchmark Comparison
| Benchmark | Task Type | GPT-5.1 Thinking | GPT-5.2 Thinking | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-Bench Pro | Coding | 50.8% | 55.6% | SOTA |
| GPQA Diamond | Science (No tools) | 88.1% | 92.4% | SOTA |
| AIME 2025 | Math Competition | 94.0% | 100.0% | ACED |
| GDPval | Real World Knowledge | 59.6%* | 70.9% | SOTA |
*Comparison vs Opus 4.5 (second place)
The ARC-AGI-2 Shock
The most stunning result comes from ARC-AGI-2, a benchmark designed to test true general intelligence—learning and generalizing new concepts.
- GPT-5.1 Thinking: 17.6%
- GPT-5.2 Thinking: 52.9%
This is a massive leap in reasoning capability. Furthermore, verified tests show the "Pro High" version of 5.2 achieving 54.2% accuracy at a cost of only $15.72 per task. Compared to the unreleased "o3 high" preview from a year ago, this represents a 390x efficiency improvement.
Real-World "Economic" Tasks
OpenAI is emphasizing that 5.2 isn't just good at tests; it's good at work.
Excel & Data Formatting
In a comparison of creating Workforce Planning models and Cap Tables, GPT-5.2 demonstrated superior formatting and, more importantly, accuracy.
- GPT-5.1: Struggled with complex formulas, leaving rows blank in Cap Tables (a dangerous error in finance).
- GPT-5.2: Correctly calculated Series A and B liquidation preferences and formatted the sheet to be human-readable immediately.
Tool Use & Reliability
For enterprise users, reliability is key. On the Tau2-bench (Telecom) for customer support tool use:
- GPT-5.1: 47.8% success rate.
- GPT-5.2: 98.7% success rate.
It essentially doubles the reliability of complex tool-use chains, making it viable for autonomous agents in a way previous models weren't.
Visual Reasoning & Coding
The model's ability to understand what it's seeing has arguably doubled.
- Motherboard Identification: When shown a circuit board, 5.2 correctly boxed and identified almost every chip and port, whereas 5.1 missed the majority of the components.
- UI Coding: In a demo creating an "Ocean Wave Simulation" app from a single prompt, 5.2 delivered a polished UI with working sliders for wind speed and wave height. 5.1’s attempts were functional but visually broken.
Pricing & Availability
The performance jump comes with a price hike. GPT-5.2 is available immediately for paid users (Plus, Pro, Team), but API costs have increased.
- GPT-5.1: $1.25 / $10.00 (Input/Output per 1M tokens)
- GPT-5.2: $1.75 / $14.00 (Input/Output per 1M tokens)
While more expensive, the reduction in error rates (hallucinations down by ~30%) and the "one-shot" success rate may make it cheaper in practice for complex tasks.
The Verdict
According to early LMSYS Arena results, GPT-5.2 has debuted at #2 overall (just behind Claude Opus 4.5) and #1 in Coding. With 100% on AIME and >50% on ARC-AGI-2, we are witnessing a model that has finally cracked the code on high-level reasoning and generalization.
Have you tried GPT-5.2 yet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!