Pichai pushes back on claims Google is losing ground in AI race
Pichai highlights Flash models and Gemini 4 roadmap
"We've had clearly frontier models. There are many attributes on which we are still at the frontier; there are areas where we've acknowledged we need to improve and coding and agentic coding is an example of that," he said in response to JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth, who questioned whether Gemini could remain competitive at the industry's leading edge and noted Google's slower release of models.
Rather than dwell on the Gemini 3.5 Pro delay, Pichai repeatedly highlighted Gemini Flash, Google's cheaper, faster "workhorse" model that powers a growing range of applications, including cybersecurity, customer-service agents, data analytics and enterprise software.
He pointed to Gemini 3.6 Flash, released this week, saying it had improved by more than 10 points on a coding benchmark compared with the previous version while using fewer tokens. The company on Tuesday also unveiled Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and a cybersecurity-focused Flash Cyber model, while keeping Gemini 3.5 Pro in partner testing.
