OpenAI has significantly broadened access to its highly capable GPT-5.2 Codex model, making it available to developers through its API. This move, reported on January 16, 2026, allows third-party applications to directly integrate the advanced coding AI. The GPT-5.2 Codex, initially announced in December 2025 and integrated into GitHub Copilot by January 14, 2026, represents a major leap in AI's ability to handle complex software engineering and defensive cybersecurity tasks. Designed as an 'agentic' model, GPT-5.2 Codex can independently plan, execute, and verify multi-step engineering workflows, including large code changes like refactoring and migrations. It boasts a substantial 400,000-token context window, enabling it to maintain context across extensive projects. On benchmarks, GPT-5.2 Codex has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance, achieving 56.4% on SWE-Bench Pro and 64.0% on Terminal-Bench 2.0. The broader GPT-5.2 model also scored a perfect 100% on AIME 2025 mathematics and surpassed human baselines on the ARC-AGI-2 abstract reasoning benchmark. While GPT-5.2 excels in reasoning, mathematics, speed, and cost efficiency, it offers a compelling alternative to models like Claude Opus 4.5, which sometimes leads in specific coding accuracy benchmarks like SWE-bench Verified. OpenAI acknowledges the dual-use risks associated with such powerful AI and has implemented a controlled rollout, including a restricted pilot program for defensive cybersecurity professionals. The model is priced at $1.75 per million input tokens and $14 per million output tokens, making advanced AI-driven development more accessible globally, including for India's vast developer community.