Google DeepMind chief says Gemini 4 is nearly ready as rivals pull ahead

Gemini 4 is in its refinement stage

Google's long-awaited Gemini 4 model is in its refinement stage and could launch well before the end of the year, according to The Verge. The comments came from Koray Kavukcuoglu, the newly installed head of Google DeepMind, speaking to The Information in his first media appearance since taking charge of the division.

Kavukcuoglu said Google wants to release an early post-training version of the model as soon as possible because the team is seeing results it is excited about, and he promised that Google will keep up its fast-paced iteration cycles after launch. According to The Verge, the company is aiming for a debut "much earlier" than the end of the year.

The gap Gemini 4 has to close

Google has not released a new flagship model since the Gemini 3 series in November 2025. In the months since, OpenAI shipped GPT-6 and Anthropic launched its Mythos series, and as The Verge reports, both outperform Gemini 3, handing Google's rivals a sizable lead in the AI race.

Google had signalled a stopgap that never arrived. CEO Sundar Pichai told the I/O conference in May that a major Gemini 3.5 Pro update would land in June, but the model was never rolled out. Kavukcuoglu acknowledged that Google "took a little bit of a step back" there, explaining that the company chose to focus on faster, less powerful Flash models instead.

Pressed on whether he worried about Google falling behind, the new chief was categorical: "In my mind, it's a certainty that we are always gonna be at the frontier."

First comments from a new leader

The interview also marks a reset at the top of Google's AI organisation. Demis Hassabis stepped down as DeepMind's leader in August, having earlier said that "great progress" was being made on Gemini 4. According to The Verge, the change in leadership, together with a Gemini 4 launch, could mark a return to a more consistent release cadence for Google after months of slipped timelines.

Why it matters

Google is currently behind its two closest competitors on flagship models, and Gemini 4 is the product meant to answer that. Credibility is the other issue: Google publicly promised a Gemini 3.5 Pro update for June that never shipped, so a timeline announced by a brand-new division chief will be measured against that record. If Gemini 4 arrives early and performs well, Kavukcuoglu's talk of the frontier being "a certainty" gains substance; if it slips again, Google risks conceding another release cycle to OpenAI and Anthropic. The stated plan of shipping an early post-training version and iterating quickly also signals where Google believes it can move fastest, which points toward rapid refinement and follow-up releases rather than one slow, monolithic model drop.