Google I/O 2026: Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini Spark agent and Antigravity 2.0
Confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 29 September 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra19 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5In its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen49 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7In its training data
It is after the cutoff of GPT-6 Astra and Gemini 4 Hydrogen, and can be in the training data of Claude Opus 5.5 and Grok 4.7.
Key facts
- Gemini 3.5 Flash GA 2026-05-19; became the model behind the gemini-flash-latest alias
- Terminal-Bench 2.1: 76.2%; GDPval-AA: 1656 Elo; MCP Atlas: 83.6% — Google says it beats Gemini 3.1 Pro on these
- Google: ~4x faster output tokens/s than other frontier models, often less than half the cost
- Reported API price: $1.50 input / $9.00 output per 1M tokens (third-party sources; 3.6 Flash launch coverage also cites $9 output)
- AI Mode in Search passed 1 billion monthly users; default model upgraded to Gemini 3.5 Flash
- Gemini Spark: autonomous personal agent, early beta for AI Ultra subscribers
- Antigravity 2.0 desktop app, CLI and SDK; Managed Agents API in public preview (antigravity-preview-05-2026)
- Android XR audio/AI glasses (Gentle Monster, Warby Parker, Samsung) announced for fall 2026
Show 1 more
- Gemini 3.5 Pro: internal only, announced for ‘next month’ (June) — missed
What happened
Google’s I/O 2026 keynote (19 May) introduced the Gemini 3.5 family with Gemini 3.5 Flash, generally available the same day in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, the Gemini API/AI Studio, Android Studio and Google Antigravity. Google positioned it as rivalling large flagship models on coding and agentic tasks at Flash speeds. Other launches: Gemini Spark (a 24/7 personal agent that acts on the user’s behalf, checking before major actions), Antigravity 2.0 (agent-first IDE, CLI and SDK), a Managed Agents API, Search “information agents”, Universal Cart, and Gemini Omni (see separate entry). Computer use for 3.5 Flash followed in public preview on 24 June.
Why it matters
3.5 Flash marked the moment Google’s cheap tier overtook its previous flagship (3.1 Pro) on agentic coding benchmarks, and it opened a run of four Flash releases in ~106 days. The promised Gemini 3.5 Pro, however, missed its June target and several later ones — a delay that contributed to DeepMind’s August leadership shake-up.
Sources
6 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
6 sources: 5 primary, 1 press
Primary
- Gemini 3.5: frontier intelligence with action (Google blog)blog.google, official
- 100 things we announced at Google I/O 2026blog.google, official
- All the news from the Google I/O 2026 developer keynotedevelopers.googleblog.com, official
- Google Search I/O 2026 updatesblog.google, official
- Gemini API release notes (19 May 2026)ai.google.dev, docs
Press
- MarkTechPost: Google introduces Gemini 3.5 Flash at I/O 2026marktechpost.com, press
Changes
- Filed