See! After what felt like forever, January is finally over!

Happy Saturday Reader! Here to deliver your weekly dose of AI and Tech updates

Happy Digging!

Anthropic just made its Cowork tool a lot more useful for business users by adding something you’ve probably heard of before: plugins. Earlier this month, the company released Cowork as a way to bring the power of its AI coding assistant to people who don’t write code, and now these new plugins are designed to make the tool even more practical for everyday work tasks.

The concept is straightforward. Plugins let you automate specific jobs in different parts of your company, whether that’s writing marketing copy, checking legal documents for potential issues, or handling customer support messages. You basically tell Claude what you need done, which tools and information to use, and how you want things handled, and the plugin takes care of the rest with a consistent approach every time.

Matt Piccolella from Anthropic’s product team says the company expects businesses to build their own custom plugins for whatever they need. To help get people started, Anthropic released 11 of its own internal plugins and says creating new ones doesn’t require much technical know-how. These plugins have actually been part of Claude Code for a while now, and bringing them to Cowork is really about making the same capabilities available to a broader audience with a friendlier interface that anyone can use.

Inside Anthropic, the company has already seen plugins work well for things like data analysis and sales. Piccolella mentioned that the sales team in particular has found them valuable for staying connected to customers and getting better feedback. The more people use these plugins, the smarter Claude gets about understanding how your company works and finding ways to make things run more smoothly.

Right now, plugins save to your local computer, though Anthropic plans to add a way for entire organizations to share them soon. Cowork itself is still in research preview mode after launching just two weeks ago, so it’s not clear when it’ll be available to everyone. In the meantime, any paying Claude customer can start using plugins.

Google Maps is getting smarter for people on foot and on bikes. The company announced that you can now use Gemini hands-free while walking and cycling, extending a feature that was previously only available for drivers. This is part of Google’s bigger push to weave its AI assistant into more of your daily routine and turn Maps from a simple direction tool into something you can actually have a conversation with.

If you’re walking around town, you can now ask Gemini things like what’s interesting about your neighborhood, what attractions you should check out, or whether there are any cafes with bathrooms along your route. Google points out that trying to walk and type at the same time is awkward, so the hands-free feature lets you ask questions without stopping or leaving the navigation screen. Cyclists can do the same thing while keeping their eyes on the road and hands on the handlebars, asking about arrival times, upcoming meetings, or even sending a quick text to let someone know they’re running late.

The feature works like a real conversation, so you can ask follow-up questions without starting over. You might ask if there’s an affordable vegan restaurant within a couple miles of your route, and then immediately follow up with a question about parking. It’s the kind of back-and-forth that makes the AI feel less like a search engine and more like a helpful companion who knows where you’re going.

The update is available now worldwide on iPhones wherever Gemini works, and it’s rolling out on Android phones too. This comes on the heels of other recent Maps improvements, including a Gemini-powered tips section that surfaces useful details about places you’re interested in, like secret menu items or the best way to snag a reservation. Google also recently updated the Explore tab to make it easier to find popular spots nearby and added a feature that predicts how many EV chargers will be available when you arrive at a charging station.

All of this is happening as Google doubles down on integrating Gemini across its products. Just yesterday, the company updated Chrome with deeper Gemini integration and new features that can handle tasks on your behalf, as it competes with AI-focused browsers from OpenAI, Perplexity, Opera, and The Browser Company. Google wants Gemini to be everywhere you are, whether you’re browsing the web, driving across town, or just walking to get coffee.

Anthropic is raising a lot more money than originally planned. According to the Financial Times, the AI company has doubled its fundraising target from $10 billion to $20 billion, with the round expected to close soon. If it goes through, the deal would value Anthropic at a staggering $350 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in tech.

The reason for the increase is that investors can’t seem to get enough of the company behind Claude and Claude Code. The list of backers reportedly includes some heavy hitters like Sequoia Capital, which is also an investor in Anthropic’s rival OpenAI, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and investment firm Coatue. It’s worth noting that venture capital firms traditionally avoid backing direct competitors, so Sequoia’s involvement with both companies is particularly noteworthy.

This massive fundraising push comes at a busy time for Anthropic. Late last year, reports emerged that the company had hired lawyers to prepare for a potential initial public offering that could happen sometime in 2026. Going public would be a major milestone for the AI startup, especially given how quickly it has grown in both value and prominence.

Just a few months ago in September, Anthropic announced a $13 billion funding round that valued the company at $183 billion, already making it one of the industry’s most valuable private players. Now, with this new $20 billion raise, the company’s valuation has nearly doubled in a matter of months. That kind of growth reflects the intense investor enthusiasm around AI companies right now, particularly those that have established themselves as serious competitors in the space.

OpenAI just launched Prism, a new workspace designed specifically for scientists and researchers who want AI help with their work. The tool is free for anyone with a ChatGPT account and works like an enhanced word processor that’s deeply connected to GPT-5.2. Scientists can use it to check their claims, polish their writing, or dig through previous research without leaving their workspace.

The company isn’t trying to replace human scientists here. Instead, OpenAI executives compare Prism to coding tools like Cursor and Windsurf, which help programmers work faster without doing the actual thinking for them. Kevin Weill, OpenAI’s VP for Science, thinks 2026 will do for AI and science what last year did for AI and software development, meaning we’re about to see a lot more researchers using these kinds of tools in their daily work.

OpenAI says ChatGPT gets about 8.4 million messages per week on advanced science topics, though it’s hard to say how many of those are from actual professional researchers versus curious students or hobbyists. Still, AI-assisted research is becoming more mainstream in academic circles. Math researchers have been using AI models to prove longstanding problems by combining literature reviews with new applications of existing techniques, and a statistics paper published in December used GPT 5.2 Pro to establish new proofs with humans only prompting and checking the model’s work.

A lot of Prism’s appeal comes from smart product design rather than revolutionary AI breakthroughs. The tool integrates with LaTeX, the formatting system that scientists use for writing papers, but goes way beyond what most LaTeX software can do. It also uses GPT 5.2’s visual capabilities to help researchers turn whiteboard sketches into proper diagrams, which anyone who’s fought with scientific formatting knows can be a huge headache. The real power move is how Prism connects ChatGPT to your entire research project, so when you ask the AI a question, it already knows the full context of what you’re working on and can give much smarter, more relevant answers.

OpenAI believes the same thing that made AI tools so powerful for software engineers will work for scientists too. It’s not just about having a great model, it’s about building that model into the actual workflow where people do their work. Prism is betting that a cleaner, more integrated interface will bring scientific researchers into the AI fold faster than they would have come on their own.

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