#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 02/02/2026

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) 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)
  Jargon decoded Explain like I'm new

  token

  AI models process text by breaking it down into pieces called tokens. A 1M-token context window means the model can consider a very large amount of text at once.

  Tokens are like words or parts of words that AI uses to understand text. A big token number means it can remember a lot from a conversation or document.

  agent teams

  In AI, agents are systems designed to perform tasks autonomously. Agent teams suggest multiple AI agents working collaboratively to achieve a goal.

  These are like AI assistants that can work together to get a job done, instead of just one AI doing everything.

  hybrid attention

  Attention mechanisms are crucial for AI models to focus on relevant parts of input data. Hybrid attention likely combines different methods to improve efficiency or performance.

  This is a smarter way for AI to focus on the most important parts of the information it is given, making it work better or faster.