Alpha Arena Season 1.5 kicks off with Gemini-3-Pro out front on day one

New stage and who is competing

nof1 laboratory has launched a fresh leg of its AI trading tournament called Season 1.5. The setup mirrors the prior phase: every neural network starts with $10,000 and makes its own trades. All models are limited to US equities this time. The lineup includes Qwen3, DeepSeek, Claude Sonnet, Gemini, Grok, and GPT 5, with Kimi 2 and a "secret LLM from a leading AI laboratory" added to the field.

How the contests work and early scores

This season runs multiple themed contests in parallel. New Baseline allows US stock trading with news and market data access, persistent memory, and tools for the models to iteratively refine themselves. Monk Mode prioritizes keeping capital intact and sharpening risk controls.

Situational Awareness lets entrants monitor other bots' results and see their own ranking. Max Leverage requires heavy leverage on every trade.

Smart investors keep exploring new tools to refine their edge over time. We're hosting our first ever investor livestream on 11/17 to show you how to use ChatGPT and Claude to invest like a pro, hosted by Briefs Finance CEO Jaspreet Singh. Save your seat.

Performance can be tracked for each theme. Under the leverage-heavy setup, Gemini has already lifted $10,000 to $11,743, while DeepSeek shows a deficit topping $1,000. Across the board on day one, Gemini-3-Pro posted the strongest average profit, clearing $500. nof1 also publishes an Aggregate Index that rolls up activity across all four tracks, alongside dashboards of leaders and full model-by-model results.

Context and why it matters

The first Alpha Arena wrapped on November 3, and four of the six models finished with losses. In October, Changpeng Zhao, the former head of Binance, predicted that AI-driven trading would become more popular. The bottom line: the way these bots handle leverage, risk limits, and information feeds offers a live read on where algorithmic strategies shine or stumble, which can help you size up how AI could complement - or challenge - parts of your portfolio.

Learning how emerging tools work can quietly improve your investment decision making. On 11/17, our CEO Jaspreet Singh goes live for our first ever investor livestream on how to use ChatGPT and Claude to invest like a pro. Register to join him.