Key Points
- Google promised Gemini 3.5 Pro in June at I/O 2026; it has not shipped
- A widely reported July 17 target, never confirmed by Google, also passed
- Bloomberg reports the model fell short of internal targets, particularly on coding
- Alphabet shares sank 4% on July 16, the day of the report
Google told developers in May to expect Gemini 3.5 Pro the following month. June passed. A July 17 date that circulated widely in reporting passed too. Google has not named a new one.
The date Google set for itself
Google announced Gemini 3.5 Flash at its I/O developer conference on May 19 and said the Pro tier would roll out "next month," per Search Engine Journal's account of the keynote. CNBC reports Google described 3.5 Pro at the time as already in internal use but not ready for a broader rollout until June. June closed without a release. A July 17 launch then circulated in reporting after what TechTimes described as a ground-up rebuild — a date Google never confirmed, and one our July 17 roundup flagged as missed. Flash remains the only shipped model in the 3.5 family, and 9to5Google notes that Gemini 3.1 Pro, out since February, is still the top of the Pro line.
What Bloomberg reports went wrong
The delay was first reported by Bloomberg on July 16, citing people familiar with the matter. Per that reporting, 3.5 Pro is months behind schedule because Google kept working on its capabilities, and coding performance in particular came in under internal expectations. Bloomberg reported that Google refreshed the model's training data in late June to lift those coding results, and that one of the people described the results as disappointing. The same reporting says the slip has frustrated Google engineers, researchers and managers who believe the company is losing ground to Anthropic and OpenAI, and — as eWeek summarized it — that contributions from Google DeepMind, Google Cloud, Android and consumer product teams create coordination overhead smaller labs do not carry. Google has confirmed none of it. This is a single-source scoop that other outlets have since aggregated.
What Google will say
The only on-the-record account is a company statement, given to both Bloomberg and CNBC. "We're shipping quickly across a wide range of models while keeping them highly cost-effective for customers," a spokesperson said. "We're currently testing 3.5 Pro, an upgraded Flash model, and other models with partners, and we're productively engaged with the U.S. government." Testing with partners is not a rollout. Google did not address the reported reasons for the delay and has not given a new month.
The competitive picture
Coding is the contested ground. Sundar Pichai conceded the gap in May, saying Google was "a bit behind" on agentic coding and attributing it to the lack of a developer-facing surface that generates the right feedback data. Since then, per CNBC, Meta shipped Muse Spark 1.1, which AI chief Alexandr Wang described as the company's "strongest model for agentic and coding work yet," and OpenAI released GPT-5.6 Sol, which Sam Altman said is 54% more token efficient on agentic coding tasks. Anthropic, the other name in Bloomberg's account, closed a $65 billion round at a $965 billion valuation on run-rate revenue it credits largely to enterprise Claude and Claude Code adoption. The pressure is not only from the closed U.S. labs: on July 16, the same day as the Bloomberg report, Beijing's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, an open-weight model that took the top spot on Arena.ai's Frontend Code leaderboard.
The exposure
Alphabet shares sank 4% on July 16, per CNBC. The roadmap pressure runs past the stock. Apple rebuilt Siri on Gemini, announced at WWDC in June, which ties a second company's flagship assistant to Google's model cadence. Until Pro ships, the top of Google's Pro line is still Gemini 3.1 Pro, released in February.
Others covering this
CNBC — "Alphabet shares fall on report its most powerful AI model Gemini 3.5 Pro is delayed"
"Alphabet announced the Gemini 3.5 Pro AI in May, saying it was being used internally but wouldn't be ready for a broader rollout until the following month."
9to5Google — "Gemini 3.5 Pro delays due to coding performance, upgraded Flash model in testing"
"In mid-May, Google announced Gemini 3.5 Flash at I/O 2026 and said the Pro version would arrive in June. That deadline has passed."
Search Engine Journal — "Google Delays Gemini 3.5 Pro Over Coding Issues: Report"
"Google said it expected Gemini 3.5 Pro to roll out by now. It hasn't shipped, and Bloomberg reports coding is part of what's holding it up."
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