OpenAI and Google Accelerate the AI Race: Businesses Stand to Benefit New AI updates bring rapid innovation and improving AI capabilities for businesses and end users globally.

Google and OpenAI are locked in a tight race to win the AI race. On a rare occasion, Google dropped a new version of Gemini Deep Research agent based on Gemini 3 Pro shortly after OpenAI released GPT‑5.2, which the Microsoft-owned company defines as the most capable model series yet for professional knowledge work.

The ongoing AI race is reminiscent of the tech battles of yesteryears - Apple vs Microsoft, Nokia vs Samsung, Xbox (Microsoft) vs PS (Sony), Apple vs Samsung, and many more. With the passage of time, we have known who is the clear winner and the lasting impact they have on consumers. Some companies such as BlackBerry and Nokia become footnotes in history despite having a big impact during their days.

Having said that, the two developments in AI also have a large impact on businesses, creators, researchers and consumers in India and around the world.

GPT 5.2: A Gamechanger

In a detailed blog post, OpenAI claimed that an average ChatGPT Enterprise user says⁠ AI saves them 40–60 minutes a day, and power users say it saves them more than 10 hours a week.

"We designed GPT‑5.2 to unlock even more economic value for people; it's better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long contexts, using tools, and handling complex, multi-step projects. GPT‑5.2 sets a new state of the art across many benchmarks, including GDPval, where it outperforms industry professionals at well-specified knowledge work tasks spanning 44 occupation," according to OpenAI.

OpenAI also disclosed that platforms like Notion, Box, Shopify, Harvey, and Zoom have observed that GPT‑5.2 provides better long-horizon reasoning and tool-calling performance. And platforms like Databricks, Hex and Triple Whale found GPT 5.2's superior at agentic data science and document analysis tasks.

Experts believe that GPT 5.2 is a big game change for the additional attributes it brings over an already existing super AI platform.

"OpenAI's GPT-5.2 is a game-changer as it introduces deeper logical chains, richer context handling and offers significant improvements in speed, reasoning, coding and long-context handling. It leaps beyond the previous models with substantial performance improvements across core metrics. It is known to be the most advanced reasoning model that solves harder problems more effectively," Jaspreet Bindra, co-founder of AI&Beyond tells Entrepreneur India.

Google's new update, on other hand, empowers developers to integrate Google's SATA-model research capabilities in their respective platforms.The new research tool is also capable of handling large chunks of information and even understanding larger context. This will be soon integrated into Google's services such as Search, Finance, Gemini, and others. TechCrunch notes that the move marks a significant step towards making Agentic AIs more empowered, and replacing conventional ways of Googling things.

The AI Race

Even as Google and OpenAI are among the frontrunners, the likes of Perplexity have also gained traction in the recent months. Outside the US, there are a lot of developments happening in China. As mentioned above, this is an intense competition, mostly aimed at gaining the new set of users and enterprises that will be replacing a lot of tech tools with AI or at least integrate with it.

The AI competition between Open AI and Google (Gemini) is heating up, with both companies racing to gain paid subscribers. This competition benefits users worldwide, driving innovation and improving AI capabilities.

According to Bindra, key factors that will establish a market leader include: providing accuracy and reliability results is crucial for building trust with the users, making AI accessible and easy to use will be essential for widespread adoption, seamless integration with the existing tools and platforms will be a key differentiator to become a market leader.

"The LLM provider market in the West is characterized by a three-horse race – OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. The competition between these providers is intense with rapid model releases and incremental improvement in capabilities. The users now have better choices in terms of faster innovation and competitive models from more than one provider, which enhances choices and keeps pricing competitive," Arun Chandrasekaran, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner told Entrepreneur India.

Chandrasekaran added that market leadership will be driven less by pure model performance and more by distribution, and habit formation in the consumer space and by Integration, Guardrails and autonomous workflows in the enterprise. Winners will need to combine deep ecosystem integration , trust and safety at scale, and clear ROI for paid users rather than novelty. Over time, switching costs created by workflows, agents, and user data will act as barriers to exit for the users.

Leveraging Recent AI Updates for Business Advantage

Experts say businesses and developers can use GPT-5.2's advanced capabilities in reasoning, complex problem-solving and vision for powerful applications such as creating fully autonomous agents, enhancing software development and improving multi-step customer support workflows.

Bindra adds that it can improve productivity by leveraging the model's coding capabilities to speed up development and reduce errors. It can also help make informed decisions for the businesses by using the GPT-5.2's improved reasoning and analysis capabilities.

AI plays a transformative role in the SaaS industry. It enhances product functionality, automates important tasks, and delivers personalized experiences. Earlier, AI was considered as an added benefit for businesses. But now its impact is a fundamental component of modern SaaS platforms, Bindra explained.

IT firms can benefit by developing AI powered solutions. Leveraging GPT-5.2 and other AI models to create innovative solutions for a varied range of industries. By offering consulting services to help businesses integrate AI into their operations and by developing products that utilize AI to solve real-world problems such as chatbots, virtual assistants and predictive analytics tools.

"Indian firms can win by becoming AI workflow operators, embedding foundation models into domain-specific workflows at scale. Their advantage lies in process reengineering, cost-efficient engineering, verticalization and enterprise change management. Building AI-led managed services, agent operations, and industry-specific copilots can create more sticky revenues. The biggest upside is owning outcomes and delivering real business value, not reselling model access," Chandrasekaran explained.