Google releases three new Gemini models, but not the 3.5 Pro

On Tuesday, Google DeepMind released Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber. Gemini 3.6 Flash is Google’s “flagship model” and promises improved coding, knowledge work, and multimodal performance while reducing token usage by up to 17% and being cheaper than its predecessor, 3.5 Flash.

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the most cost-effective model in its class, and 3.5 Flash Cyber ​​is a specialized model fine-tuned to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities at an affordable price. Google said the model is available only to governments and trusted partners as part of a limited access pilot program.

Google says the focus of these releases is to provide efficiency, latency, and reliability for customers building AI agents at scale.

This announcement is notable not only for what Google shipped (cheap, fast models optimized for coding, efficiency, and cybersecurity), but also for what it didn’t ship. The update does not include any long-awaited updates to Google’s flagship Gemini Pro, which was last updated in February.

Since its release, OpenAI has released GPT-5.5 and started rolling out GPT-5.6. Meanwhile, Anthropic has expanded access to its Frontier Fable 5 models with the release of Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Sonnet 5. This highlights Rival Labs’ frenetic release pace.

Google teased the release of Pro as part of the 3.5 Flash release in May, saying the Pro version was “already in use internally and we look forward to rolling it out next month.” Last week, Bloomberg reported that the launch of 3.5 Pro has been delayed internally as Google struggles to meet internal performance goals.

The Gemini Pro model is typically Google’s top-of-the-line offering for complex reasoning and coding tasks, while the Flash model prioritizes low cost and fast response times for production applications.

Google DeepMind product lead Logan Kilpatrick said Tuesday that the company is currently testing Gemini 3.5 Pro with partners and hopes to “land soon.” He also noted that the team has begun its most ambitious pre-training for Gemini 4 to date.