#234 - Opus 4.6, GPT-5.3-codex, Seedance 2.0, GLM-5

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. A thank you to our current sponsors: Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn more ODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026. Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a year Timestamps: (00:00:10) Intro / Banter (00:02:03) Sponsor Break (00:05:33) Response to listener comments Tools & Apps (00:07:27) A Anthropic 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) C Cursor 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? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.