2026 in LLMs (so far)

2026 has been a wild year for LLMs. The OpenClaw craze kicked things off in January, then we had tokenmaxxing, then the death of tokenmaxxing, US export controls on frontier models, open weight models that compete with that frontier, accidental cyberattacks by the labs’ own models, and a technically credible intervention by the Pope.

And the year’s not over yet! Join Simon for a review of everything 2026 has thrown at us so far, what it all means, and how it might shape what you’re building next.