On February 12, OpenAI launched GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, an ultra-fast artificial intelligence (AI) model designed for real-time software development, marking a major shift toward instant, interactive coding workflows as competition in the AI tools market heats up. The model, a smaller version of GPT-5.3-Codex, is being released as a research preview to ChatGPT Pro users and select partners. OpenAI said it is optimized for near-instant responses when deployed on specialized low-latency hardware, delivering more than 1,000 tokens per second. The launch also represents the first milestone in OpenAI’s partnership with chipmaker Cerebras, announced in January.
Unlike larger AI models built for extended autonomous tasks, Codex-Spark is tuned for rapid iteration, enabling engineers to edit code, refine logic, and respond immediately to user input. According to OpenAI, “Codex-Spark is our first model designed specifically for working with Codex in real-time—making targeted edits, reshaping logic, or refining interfaces and seeing results immediately.” The system supports both quick interactions and more complex projects, allowing engineers to intervene, redirect, or interrupt output as it is generated. By default, the model keeps its working style lightweight, performing minimal edits and skipping automated tests unless requested.
Codex-Spark features a 128,000-token context window and is currently text-only. While smaller than frontier models, it performs strongly on software engineering benchmarks such as SWE-Bench Pro and Terminal-Bench 2.0, completing tasks in a fraction of the time. This release reflects a broader trend toward specialized AI models that prioritize responsiveness over maximum reasoning depth, particularly for developer tools where low latency directly impacts productivity. OpenAI has also redesigned its infrastructure to reduce delays across the entire request pipeline, including persistent WebSocket connections and optimizations to its Responses API, which cut overhead per client-server roundtrip by 80% and halved the time-to-first-token.
Codex-Spark runs on Cerebras’ Wafer Scale Engine 3, a purpose-built AI accelerator optimized for high-speed inference. This hardware complements traditional GPU infrastructure by focusing on ultra-low latency. “What excites us most about GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark is partnering with OpenAI and the developer community to discover what fast inference makes possible—new interaction patterns, new use cases, and a fundamentally different model experience,” said Sean Lie, co-founder and CTO of Cerebras. OpenAI emphasized that while GPUs remain central to training and broad deployment, specialized chips can accelerate workflows where response time is critical, offering a glimpse of a new era in interactive AI-driven coding.
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