Recent Developments in Large Language Models Over the Past Six Months

May 19, 2026

AI Summary

The last six months have seen significant advancements in large language models (LLMs), particularly in coding capabilities. Key models have changed hands among major providers, with notable improvements in the quality of coding agents, making them more reliable for practical use.

In November 2025, a notable inflection point occurred in LLMs, particularly for coding tasks.
The title of the 'best' model shifted among several major providers, including Claude Sonnet 4.5, GPT-5.1, Gemini 3, and Claude Opus 4.5.
OpenAI and Anthropic enhanced their coding agents through Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards, resulting in a significant improvement in code quality.
The first commit to the Warelay project occurred in November, which later became known as OpenClaw, a personal AI assistant that gained popularity quickly.
February 2026 saw the release of Gemini 3.1 Pro and the Gemma 4 series of models by Google, alongside the introduction of GLM-5.1 by a Chinese AI lab.
The advancements in LLMs included improved performance of laptop-available models, which began to exceed expectations despite being less powerful than frontier models.
Overall, the past six months highlighted the growing capabilities of coding agents and the emergence of effective open-weight models.

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Recent Developments in Large Language Models Over the Past Six Months

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