Our 234th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Recorded on 01/02/2026

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris

Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/

In this episode:

* Major model launches include Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 with a 1M-token context window and “agent teams,” OpenAI’s GPT-5.3 Codex and faster Codex Spark via Cerebras, and Google’s Gemini 3 Deep Think posting big jumps on ARC-AGI-2 and other STEM benchmarks amid criticism about missing safety documentation.

* Generative media advances feature ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 text-to-video with high realism and broad prompting inputs, new image models Seedream 5.0 and Alibaba’s Qwen Image 2.0, plus xAI’s Grok Imagine API for text/image-to-video.

* Open and competitive releases expand with Zhipu’s GLM-5, DeepSeek’s 1M-token context model, Cursor Composer 1.5, and open-weight Qwen3 Coder Next using hybrid attention aimed at efficient local/agentic coding.

* Business updates include ElevenLabs raising $500M at an $11B valuation, Runway raising $315M at a $5.3B valuation, humanoid robotics firm Apptronik raising $935M at a $5.3B valuation, Waymo announcing readiness for high-volume production of its 6th-gen hardware, plus industry drama around Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad and departures from xAI.

Timestamps:

• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
• (00:02:03) Sponsor Break
• (00:05:33) Response to listener comments
• Tools & Apps
• (00:07:27) AAnthropic releases Opus 4.6 with new 'agent teams' | TechCrunch
• (00:11:28) OpenAI's new GPT-5.3-Codex is 25% faster and goes way beyond coding now - what's new | ZDNET
• (00:25:30) OpenAI launches new macOS app for agentic coding | TechCrunch
• (00:26:38) Google Unveils Gemini 3 Deep Think for Science & Engineering | The Tech Buzz
• (00:31:26) ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 Might be the Best AI Video Generator Yet - TechEBlog
• (00:35:14) China’s ByteDance, Alibaba unveil AI image tools to rival Google’s popular Nano Banana | South China Morning Post
• (00:36:54) DeepSeek boosts AI model with 10-fold token addition as Zhipu AI unveils GLM-5 | South China Morning Post
• (00:43:11) CCursor launches Composer 1.5 with upgrades for complex tasks
• (00:44:03) xAI launches Grok Imagine API for text and image to video
• Applications & Business
• (00:45:47) Nvidia-backed AI voice startups ElevenLabs hits $11 billion valuation
• (00:52:04) AI video startup Runway raises $315M at $5.3B valuation, eyes more capable world models | TechCrunch
• (00:54:02) Humanoid robot startup Apptronik has now raised $935M at a $5B+ valuation | TechCrunch
• (00:57:10) Anthropic says ‘Claude will remain ad-free,’ unlike an unnamed rival | The Verge
• (01:00:18) Okay, now exactly half of xAI's founding team has left the company | TechCrunch
• (01:04:03) Waymo’s next-gen robotaxi is ready for passengers — and also ‘high-volume production’ | The Verge
• Projects & Open Source
• (01:04:59) Qwen3-Coder-Next: Pushing Small Hybrid Models on Agentic Coding
• (01:08:38) OpenClaw’s AI ‘skill’ extensions are a security nightmare | The Verge
• Research & Advancements
• (01:10:40) Learning to Reason in 13 Parameters
• (01:16:01) Reinforcement World Model Learning for LLM-based Agents
• (01:20:00) Opus 4.6 on Vending-Bench – Not Just a Helpful Assistant
• Policy & Safety
• (01:22:28) METR GPT-5.2
• (01:26:59) The Hot Mess of AI: How Does Misalignment Scale with Model Intelligence and Task Complexity?

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