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 “workhorse model” that promises improved capabilities in coding, knowledge work, and multimodal performance while reducing token usage by up to 17%, making it 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 that was tuned to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities at a decent price. This model will be available exclusively to governments and trusted partners as part of a limited access pilot program, according to Google.

Google says the focus in these releases is to bring efficiency, latency, and reliability to customers who are building AI agents at scale.

The launch stands out not only for what Google shipped (cheaper, faster models optimized for coding, efficiency, and cybersecurity), but also for what it didn’t do. The update does not include the long-awaited update to Google’s flagship Gemini Pro, which was last updated in February.

In the time since that release, OpenAI has released GPT-5.5 and begun deploying GPT-5.6, while Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Sonnet 5, and expanded access to its frontier model Fable 5, highlighting the intense release pace of rival labs.

Google teased the release of Pro as part of the Flash 3.5 release in May, saying that the Pro version was “already being used internally and we expect to roll it out next month.” Last week, Bloomberg reported that Google was facing internal delays in launching the 3.5 Pro as it struggled to meet its internal performance goals.

The Gemini Pro models are generally Google’s most capable offerings for complex reasoning and coding tasks, while the Flash models prioritize lower costs and faster response times for production applications.

Logan Kilpatrick, Google DeepMind product lead, 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 yet for Gemini 4.