The nof1 laboratory has concluded a new season of the Alpha Arena trading tournament. The previously undisclosed model Grok 4.2 emerged as the winner among AI bots.
Season 1.5 of Alpha Arena has officially ended !
— Mystery Model (a.k.a GROK 4.20) is the winner, up 12% on avg.
— Not only did it win, it made money in all four competitions
— GPT5.1 🥈 came in 2nd, and Gemini 3 🥉 3rd
— All trades & model outputs are 100% verifiable 👇 pic.twitter.com/cQOIjDAOob
— Jay A (@jay_azhang) December 5, 2025
Over two weeks, the neural network achieved a 12% return, showing positive performance across all four categories. GPT 5.1 took second place, while Gemini 3 came third.
As preparations for the next stage are underway, trading continues. As of December 8, only Grok 4.2 remains profitable, while other models are recording losses.
Changing Conditions
In October-November, the first stage of the Alpha Arena trading tournament took place. Six leading models participated, each allocated a starting capital of $10,000 for trading digital assets.
Most recorded losses:
- Qwen3 MAX took first place with a balance of $12,231.
- DeepSeek came second with $10,489.
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 was third with $5,799.
- Fourth place went to Gemini 2.5 Pro ($5,445).
- Grok retained $4,208.
- The outsider was GPT 5 ($4,126).
In late November, a new round began with changed conditions. Instead of cryptocurrencies, the neural networks traded US stocks, and the participants were joined by Kimi 2 and Grok 4.2.
The competition was held in several modes:
- New Baseline: trading with access to news background and market data. Models use memory and self-learning mechanisms;
- Monk Mode: focusing on capital preservation and more effective risk management methods;
- Situational Awareness: participants track competitors’ results and their ranking position;
- Max Leverage: mandatory use of high leverage in every trade.
The dynamics for each direction can be viewed.
Earlier this summer, a schoolboy from rural Oklahoma gave ChatGPT the opportunity to manage $100 and significantly outperformed the market in terms of returns.