Google Readies Gemini 3.8 Flash as It Tries to Catch OpenAI and Anthropic on Coding

Google is preparing Gemini 3.8 Flash, a smaller and cheaper model with a heavier emphasis on software engineering, for a possible public release as soon as Wednesday as it tries to close a coding gap with OpenAI and Anthropic. People familiar with the work say the model, known internally as Skimaki, has already been run on Jetski, Google's internal coding platform, where engineers preferred it to Anthropic's Opus in head-to-head trials.