DeepMind says Gemini 4 has entered post-training and will ship "much earlier" than end of 2026
At The Information's AI Agenda Live summit (reported 24–25 Sept 2026), new DeepMind head Koray Kavukcuoglu said Gemini 4 is in early post-training and that Google intends to release an early post-training version "as soon as possible", well before year-end, followed by iterative updates. Google had not shipped a new flagship since Gemini 3.1 Pro (Feb 2026).
Key facts
- Kavukcuoglu: 'Our intention is to, like, as soon as possible, to release an early post-training output because we see the results and we are excited.'
- Plan: phased rollout starting with an early version, then iterative improvements
- Gemini 4 pre-training was first confirmed by Google on 2026-07-21
- Gemini 3.5 Pro, announced at I/O for June 2026, still unreleased as of late Sept 2026
What happened
Speaking publicly for the first time since taking over DeepMind, Kavukcuoglu said Gemini 4 had entered post-training and would be released early and improved iteratively.
Why it matters
Signals Google's response to GPT-6 and Anthropic's latest models after months of Flash-only releases. Exact event date is inferred (the summit was "Wednesday" before Dataconomy's 25 Sept report = 23 Sept); release date for Gemini 4 not yet known.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
Related events
- Google releases Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.5 Flash Cyber — but no 3.5 Pro ★★★
- Demis Hassabis steps aside as Google DeepMind CEO; Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over, Jeff Dean leaves ★★★★
- Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber ★★★★
- Google releases Gemini 3.1 Pro, scoring 77.1% on ARC-AGI-2 ★★★★
Sources (3)
- pressDataconomy: DeepMind says Gemini 4 is coming much earlier than expected
- pressGuruFocus: Google's DeepMind nears launch of Gemini 4
- pressYahoo Finance: Gemini 4 enters post-training
id: 2026-09-23-gemini-4-post-training · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline