Google DeepMind's Kavukcuoglu hints Gemini 4 lands by year-end

The remarks surface a detail Google itself has not stated publicly: when Gemini 4 will ship. The company first signaled its direction in July, when it said alongside the Gemini 3.6 Flash launch that pretraining for Gemini 4 had begun and that it was very satisfied with the progress. That the timing now comes instead through a reporter's interview notes, rather than a product or blog announcement, leaves the date informal.

Kavukcuoglu's comments also point at a divergence in how Google positions itself relative to peers. Asked about the development slowdown led by Anthropic and OpenAI, he said it is "not necessary" because safety work is always carried out in parallel — framing caution and speed as compatible rather than opposed. His claim that "Google is certainly at the frontier" reads as a direct answer to the question of where Google sits in that race.

One loose thread complicates the picture: Google had said at the Gemini 3.5 Flash launch that a higher-tier "Pro" model would be published in June, and as of now it still has not appeared. That gap suggests the release cadence Google describes in public may not always hold, so whether Gemini 4 arrives by year-end appears to be the thing to watch — the signal here, after all, was body language rather than a commitment.