Inside Gemini 4: What Sundar Pichai and Alphabet said about its next-gen AI model

During Alphabet's Q2 2026 earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google needs to improve its coding and agentic coding capabilities, and that a larger Gemini 4 base model would be necessary to stay competitive at the next frontier. These comments came a day after Google introduced Gemini 3.6 Flash and announced that Gemini 4 is currently in pretraining. Pichai expressed confidence that Google still excels in many areas but recognized that coding and agentic coding require further development. He pointed out the recent launch of 3.6 Flash as a positive step, while outlining future plans, explaining that reaching the next breakthrough depends on larger base models. Google is currently training Gemini 4, which Pichai said Google will need to compete at that level. The Flagship Still Isn't Out section notes that Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro hasn't shipped yet and is currently testing with partners, with broad availability planned as soon as it's ready. Google recently released Gemini 3.6 Flash, an update to its dependable Flash tier rather than a flagship model, which produces 17% fewer output tokens compared to 3.5 Flash and is more cost-effective, with enhanced coding abilities. On DeepSWE, a coding benchmark Google cited, it scored 49%, an increase from 37% with 3.5 Flash. Google describes 3.6 Flash as the new standard workhorse, while 3.5 Flash remains available. They also introduced a more affordable 3.5 Flash-Lite tier, now being integrated into Google Search.