Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber

2026-09-02★★★★after cutoffmodel-releaseGoogle DeepMindGoogleconfidence: high

On 2 Sept 2026 Google made Gemini 3.8 Flash generally available — its fourth Flash model in ~106 days and, per Google, its most intelligent Flash model, tuned for long-horizon software engineering (over 70% on DeepSWE v1.1) at $0.75/$3.75 per 1M tokens (intro pricing). A restricted Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber variant for vetted defenders shipped alongside. As of late Sept 2026 it is the newest Flash model in the Gemini API (`gemini-3.8-flash`).

Key facts

GA on 2026-09-02; API model ID: gemini-3.8-flash
Inputs: text, image, video, audio, PDF; output: text
Context: 1,048,576 input tokens; 65,536 output tokens; thinking levels low/medium/high
Price: $0.75 input / $3.75 output per 1M tokens through 2026-12-31, then $1.50 / $7.50 from 2027-01-01
DeepSWE v1.1: over 70% (Fortune reports 74%) — Google says it beats most larger frontier models
HLE-Verified: 54.9% (vs GPT-5.6 Sol 54.5%, Claude Opus 5 54.4%, Gemini 3.7 Flash 53.6%) per Google's table
Vals Finance Agent v2: 61.4% (vs Claude Opus 5 58.6%, GPT-5.6 Sol 53.8%) per Google's table
3.8 Flash Cyber: 47.2% pass@1 on CWE-Bench (automated patching); >70% success on internal vulnerability-finding test across 20 languages; access via application-only 'Fairwind Program'
Chrome Security reported 2.6x more correct vulnerability patches; Wiz reported +7.5–9.7% recall at 2.3–5.2x lower cost
Fortune: 10th place on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index; ~40% higher cost at high reasoning than predecessor; $2.36 vs $11.84 per task compared with Claude Opus 5
Released three weeks after Gemini 3.7 Flash (2026-08-13)

What happened

Google DeepMind released Gemini 3.8 Flash (GA) on 2 September 2026, calling it its "most intelligent Flash model, engineered for long-horizon software engineering". It is available in Google AI Studio / Gemini API, Android Studio, Google Antigravity, Gemini Enterprise, the Gemini app (Pro/Ultra), AI Mode in Search and Google Sheets.

Alongside it came Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, a specialised model for autonomous vulnerability discovery and patching, gated behind an application-only "Fairwind Program" for trusted defenders. Google cited partner results: Chrome Security got 2.6x more correct patches, Wiz saw higher recall at much lower cost, and Google Cloud's vulnerability research team found a critical bug in under two hours.

On the Gemini API it keeps the 1M-token context and multimodal inputs (text, image, video incl. YouTube URLs, audio, PDF), with configurable thinking levels, computer use (preview), search/Maps grounding, code execution, file search and structured output. Introductory pricing matches 3.7 Flash ($0.75/$3.75 per 1M tokens) until the end of 2026, then doubles.

Why it matters

Gemini 3.8 Flash caps an unusually fast cadence: 3.5 Flash (19 May), 3.6 Flash (21 Jul), 3.7 Flash (13 Aug), 3.8 Flash (2 Sep). Google's own tables show a "Flash"-tier model matching or beating frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic on some agentic/finance/reasoning benchmarks at a fraction of the price — while the flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro remained unreleased, which press framed as a sign of trouble at the top end. Cyber-specialised variants gated to vetted defenders have become a pattern across labs in 2026.

Changelog

2026-09-29: created

Related events

2026-08-13Google releases Gemini 3.7 Flash at half the price of 3.6 Flash ★★★
2026-07-21Google releases Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.5 Flash Cyber — but no 3.5 Pro ★★★
2026-05-19Google I/O 2026: Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini Spark agent and Antigravity 2.0 ★★★★
2026-09-23DeepMind says Gemini 4 has entered post-training and will ship "much earlier" than end of 2026 ★★★
2026-09-15Google ships Gemini 3.8 Live voice models and Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS with voice design and cloning ★★

Sources (7)

id: 2026-09-02-gemini-3-8-flash · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline