Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro Remains Missing Months After Launch Promise

Google's most anticipated AI model of 2024 remains conspicuously absent nearly four months after its promised release date, raising questions about the company's ability to compete at the frontier of artificial intelligence development.

CEO Sundar Pichai announced at Google I/O in May that Gemini 3.5 Pro would launch in June. "We are using it internally. It's showing great improvements," Pichai told reporters at a pre-event briefing. "We are still testing and refining it, and it will roll out to everyone next month."

That rollout never materialized. As of mid-September, the Google DeepMind website still displays "3.5 Pro coming soon" — the same placeholder message it has shown for months.

Why it matters

The delay represents more than a missed deadline. While Google stalls, competitors have released models demonstrating significant advances in mathematical reasoning and code generation — capabilities increasingly central to AI's commercial value. Google's absence from this competitive moment could allow rivals to capture developer mindshare and enterprise contracts that prove difficult to reclaim, even if Gemini 3.5 Pro eventually delivers strong performance.

Rivals advance while Google waits

The competitive landscape has shifted dramatically during Gemini 3.5 Pro's delay. OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, launching a new model generation. Anthropic shipped Fable 5.1. Both systems have demonstrated breakthroughs in coding capabilities and tackled research-level mathematics problems including the Jacobian Conjecture and Navier-Stokes equations. Chinese lab Moonshot released Kimi K3, an open-source model with 2.8 trillion parameters.

Google has released lighter offerings during this period, including a Windows Gemini app and Gemini 3.6 Flash, but nothing matching the flagship status of the delayed Pro model.

Internal turbulence and organizational friction

The delay has coincided with significant leadership changes at Google DeepMind. In August, co-founder Demis Hassabis moved to a new role as chairman and chief scientist of Alphabet, with Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over as senior vice president. The shift relocated leadership from London to Mountain View, prompting employee concerns about power consolidation, according to reporting by Fortune.

Bloomberg reported in July that the delay stemmed partly from organizational complexity — integrating a new model across Google's vast product portfolio takes time compared to leaner AI startups. The report also indicated concern among Google leaders that Gemini 3.5 Pro might not compete effectively with recent rival releases.

Falling rankings and future promises

Without a new frontier model, Google has dropped to 14th place on the Arena leaderboard and 25th in coding-specific rankings — behind several Chinese labs. The company now trails competitors in the technical benchmarks that shape industry perception.

Pichai has attempted to redirect attention toward Gemini 4, which he described as "a very ambitious effort" during the Q2 earnings call in July. "I am very excited by the progress I'm seeing internally on Gemini 4, and I'm confident that people will be pleased when we are putting it outside," he said.

The CEO emphasized plans to "release models almost at a monthly cadence" while building Gemini 4, though that promise rings hollow given the Gemini 3.5 Pro delay.

Google retains structural advantages including massive training data access and direct distribution to billions of Android and Search users. But each month without Gemini 3.5 Pro raises the performance bar the model must clear to remain competitive.

These details were first reported by Mashable, with additional reporting from Bloomberg and Fortune.