{"id":668362,"date":"2026-09-02T07:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T07:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/668362\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T07:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T07:50:16","slug":"right-on-cue-google-is-reportedly-on-the-verge-of-shipping-a-coding-first-ai-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/668362\/","title":{"rendered":"Right on Cue, Google Is Reportedly on the Verge of Shipping a Coding-First AI Model"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the popular narrative right now, Google is behind when it comes to AI models. In the popular imagination, it finished at the top of the pile last year<\/a>, and then got steamrolled by \u201cagents\u201d when platforms like OpenClaw<\/a> made token-guzzling agentic coding into the AI trend of 2026.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019ve been waiting for Google DeepMind to pivot to coding, like OpenAI did in March<\/a>, that\u2019s now on the verge of happening, according to an anonymously-sourced story in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Journal says Gemini 3.8 Flash, also known as \u201cSkimaki\u201d could be released as early as Wednesday (It\u2019s Tuesday as I\u2019m writing this). The anonymous insiders who spoke to the Journal touted the model\u2019s \u201csignificantly upgraded coding capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, this supposed release will not be the sort of multi-trillion parameter model like OpenAI\u2019s still-unreleased Astra. Frontier AI models now routinely come with prophecies of doom<\/a> before they\u2019re released, and have to endure a mysterious<\/a> vetting procedure from the White House. Instead of being the biggest and strongest, Gemini Flash models, like this rumored 3.8 Flash release, are designed to run faster and cheaper, which are also increasingly valuable attributes\u2014thus the rise of platforms for efficiently aggregating tokens from different models, like OpenRouter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the timing here is no accident. DeepMind founder and former boss Demis Hassabis stepped aside as Deepmind\u2019s CEO<\/a> early last month. While insiders were quick to claim that he\u2019d had one foot out the door for about a year<\/a>, it was also widely reported<\/a> that Google founder Sergey Brin was taking a more active interest in AI<\/a>, and planning on quickly shipping more competitive Gemini models.<\/p>\n

Hassabis, remember, is a Nobel prize winner in chemistry and has sounded as recently as last year like he was in no hurry to release revolutionary models<\/a> given the risks. His new role at DeepMind is largely focused on scientific research<\/a>, where he seems more comfortable.<\/p>\n

The Journal\u2019s Google insiders say \u201cSkimaki\u201d has been tested on an internal coding tool called \u201cJetski,\u201d and apparently coders say they like it better than Anthropic\u2019s Claude Opus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the popular narrative right now, Google is behind when it comes to AI models. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,43207,18,13167,20321,19,17,9607,82],"class_list":["post-668362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-demis-hassabis","tag-eire","tag-gemini","tag-google-deepmind","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sergey-brin","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117200356787790003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}