Overview of major announcements at the end of January 2026 in the AI ecosystem: Claude plans the first AI journey on Mars, Anthropic opens Cowork to custom plugins, OpenAI accelerates the deployment of ChatGPT apps, xAI strikes hard with its video generation API, and Qwen democratizes speech recognition.
Anthropic: Claude on Mars, Cowork plugins, and research on loss of autonomy
Claude plans the first AI journey on another planet
January 30 — On December 8, 2025, the Perseverance rover traveled 400 meters on the surface of Mars. A historic first: this journey was planned by Claude, marking the first movement planned by an AI on another planet.
Anthropic announces this partnership with NASA’s JPL. Claude analyzes Martian terrain and generates safe trajectories for the rover, paving the way for more autonomous space exploration.
Study: “Who’s in Charge?” — Loss of autonomy and AI
January 29 — Anthropic publishes new research on the risks of loss of autonomy linked to AI in daily interactions.
The study examines how AI can distort rather than inform — shaping beliefs, values, or actions in ways users might regret. Essential work to understand the societal implications of ubiquitous AI.
Plugins for Cowork: 11 open-source extensions
January 30 — Anthropic announces the arrival of plugins in Cowork, allowing the bundling of skills, connectors, slash commands, and sub-agents to transform Claude into a specialist adapted to each role.
| Plugin | Description |
|---|---|
| Productivity | Task management, calendars, and workflows |
| Enterprise search | Search within company tools |
| Plugin Create | Creation and customization of plugins |
| Sales | Prospect research, deal preparation |
| Finance | Financial analysis, modeling, KPI tracking |
| Data | Queries, visualization, and interpretation of data |
| Legal | Document review, risk detection |
| Marketing | Content writing, campaign planning |
| Customer support | Incident triage, drafting responses |
| Product management | Spec writing, roadmap prioritization |
| Biology research | Bibliographic research, result analysis |
Available in research preview for all paying Claude users.
Contribution Metrics: Measuring the impact of Claude Code
January 30 — Anthropic launches contribution metrics for Claude Code in beta.
| Metric | Internal Anthropic Result |
|---|---|
| PRs merged per engineer | +67% per day |
| Code written with Claude Code | 70-90% |
Available for Claude Team and Enterprise customers via GitHub integration.
Claude Team: New pricing
January 30 — Anthropic lowers prices for the Team plan:
| Plan | Annual | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $20/month | $25/month |
| Premium | $100/month | $125/month |
Claude Code is included with every seat.
ServiceNow Partnership
January 30 — ServiceNow chooses Claude as the default model for its Build Agent and preferred model on its AI platform. Over 29,000 employees use Claude and Claude Code, with a 95% reduction in preparation time for sales representatives.
xAI: Grok Imagine API revolutionizes video generation
January 29 — xAI unveils Grok Imagine API, a suite of APIs for cutting-edge video generation and editing.
| Benchmark | Rank |
|---|---|
| Image-to-Video Arena | #3 |
| Text-to-Video Arena | #4 |
Editing Capabilities:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Objects | Add/remove/replace |
| Scene | Weather control, ambiance |
| Restyling | Anime, cyberpunk, retro, watercolor… |
| Animation | Character performance capture |
| Sketches | Transformation into animations |
Launch Partners: Fal, ComfyUI, Invideo, Flora, HeyGen.
🔗 Grok Imagine API | Announcement @xai
OpenAI: 60+ ChatGPT apps and internal data agent
Acceleration of ChatGPT apps deployment
January 30 — OpenAI announces an acceleration in the deployment of ChatGPT applications: 60+ apps were approved this week, with more to come in the coming days.
Internal data agent: From question to insight in minutes
January 30 — OpenAI unveils the behind-the-scenes of its internal data agent, a tool designed to explore and analyze company data.
| Technology | Usage |
|---|---|
| Codex | Code execution |
| GPT-5 | Flagship model |
| Evals API | Evaluation |
| Embeddings | Semantic search |
The agent allows teams (Engineering, Data Science, Finance, Go-To-Market, Research) to go from a question to an insight in minutes rather than days.
🔗 Inside our in-house data agent
Qwen: First open-source ASR with native streaming
January 29 — Qwen releases Qwen3-ASR and Qwen3-ForcedAligner, the first LLM-based ASR models with native streaming support in open-source.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Languages | 52 (30 languages + 22 dialects) |
| Language detection | Automatic |
| Recognition | Speech, music, singing |
| Timestamps | Word/phrase-level |
| License | Apache 2.0 |
This is a significant step forward for the democratization of multilingual speech recognition.
🔗 Qwen3-ASR on GitHub | Announcement @Alibaba_Qwen
GitHub Copilot SDK: An agent in any application
January 30 — GitHub announces the Copilot SDK in technical preview.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Plan | Task decomposition |
| Invoke tools | MCP integration |
| Edit files | Programmable modifications |
| Execute commands | Shell and scripts |
All as a programmable layer usable in any application.
ElevenLabs: Revolut adopts voice agents + F1 partnership
Revolut chooses ElevenLabs Agents
January 28 — Revolut selects ElevenLabs Agents to strengthen its customer support.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Languages supported | 30+ |
| Resolution time reduction | 8x |
Audi Revolut F1 Team Partnership
January 29 — ElevenLabs becomes the official partner of the Audi Revolut F1 Team. The company will integrate its audio and voice technologies into the Formula 1 team’s ecosystem.
Manus AI: Skills and Lenny’s Newsletter partnership
Manus Skills: Transforming the agent into an expert
January 27 — Manus AI launches Manus Skills, a feature allowing the generalist agent to be transformed into a specialized expert.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Session → Skill | Transform a session into a Skill in 1 click |
| Community import | Import shared Skills |
| Specialization | Precise domains |
Notable example: 299 episodes of Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast (3.6M+ words) transformed into 7 product strategy skills.
Lenny’s Newsletter Partnership
January 28 — Manus joins Lenny Rachitsky’s Product Pass. Paying subscribers of Lenny’s Newsletter get one year of free access to Manus.
What this means
A historic week for AI: Claude becomes the first model to plan a journey on Mars, tools become more modular (Cowork plugins, Manus Skills, Copilot SDK), platforms open up to developers (ChatGPT apps, OpenAI data agent), multimodal capabilities progress (Grok Imagine), voice AI establishes itself in customer support (ElevenLabs for Revolut), and open-source continues to democratize access to advanced technologies (Qwen3-ASR).
Anthropic also raises essential questions about the loss of autonomy — a necessary reflection as AI integrates into our daily lives.
Sources
- Claude on Mars Announcement @AnthropicAI
- Who’s in Charge? @AnthropicAI
- Cowork Plugins
- Contribution Metrics
- Claude Team Updates
- ServiceNow Partnership
- Grok Imagine API
- 60+ ChatGPT apps @OpenAIDevs
- Inside our in-house data agent
- Qwen3-ASR GitHub
- GitHub Copilot SDK
- ElevenLabs Agents for Revolut
- ElevenLabs F1 Partnership
- Manus Skills
- Manus x Lenny’s Newsletter