In keeping with the favored narrative proper now, Google is behind in relation to AI fashions. Within the fashionable creativeness, it completed at the top of the pile last year, after which acquired steamrolled by “brokers” when platforms like OpenClaw made token-guzzling agentic coding into the AI development of 2026.
So in case you’ve been ready for Google DeepMind to pivot to coding, like OpenAI did in March, that’s now on the verge of taking place, in keeping with an anonymously-sourced story in the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal says Gemini 3.8 Flash, also referred to as “Skimaki” might be launched as early as Wednesday (It’s Tuesday as I’m scripting this). The nameless insiders who spoke to the Journal touted the mannequin’s “considerably upgraded coding capabilities.”
To be clear, this supposed launch is not going to be the type of multi-trillion parameter mannequin like OpenAI’s still-unreleased Astra. Frontier AI fashions now routinely include prophecies of doom earlier than they’re launched, and need to endure a mysterious vetting process from the White Home. As an alternative of being the largest and strongest, Gemini Flash fashions, like this rumored 3.8 Flash launch, are designed to run sooner and cheaper, that are additionally more and more beneficial attributes—thus the rise of platforms for effectively aggregating tokens from completely different fashions, like OpenRouter.
However the timing right here isn’t any accident. DeepMind founder and former boss Demis Hassabis stepped aside as Deepmind’s CEO early final month. Whereas insiders have been fast to say that he’d had one foot out the door for about a year, it was additionally widely reported that Google founder Sergey Brin was taking a more active interest in AI, and planning on rapidly delivery extra aggressive Gemini fashions.
Hassabis, keep in mind, is a Nobel prize winner in chemistry and has sounded as just lately as final yr like he was in no hurry to release revolutionary models given the dangers. His new function at DeepMind is largely focused on scientific research, the place he appears extra snug.
The Journal’s Google insiders say “Skimaki” has been examined on an inner coding software referred to as “Jetski,” and apparently coders say they prefer it higher than Anthropic’s Claude Opus.
