Google DeepMind has moved its next flagship model, Gemini 4, into post-training, the stage where engineers tune model behaviour and run safety tests before a release. Koray Kavukcuoglu, who was recently appointed to lead Google DeepMind, described the stage at The Information's AI Agenda Live summit on September 24. According to the reporting, the model had already completed pre-training, and the team wants to ship an early post-training version as soon as it can.
What Kavukcuoglu said.
AI Weekly quotes him saying: “Our intention is to roll out an early post-training version as soon as possible.” Digitrendz reports that he hopes to ship well before the end of 2026. In the same remarks, he said Google will “always be at the frontier” and rejected the idea that the company has lost ground to rivals. Those were statements of intent. Neither report presents them as a firm release date.
Where the model stands.
Winzheng reports that Gemini 4 is in an early post-training stage that includes safety testing and guardrail work. Google has already used the model internally to power Antigravity, its coding assistant, during testing, according to Digitrendz. None of the reports includes benchmark scores, a parameter count or pricing, so there is nothing yet to compare with rival models from OpenAI or Anthropic. Winzheng's report, published the day after the summit, also frames the early release as a response to competitive pressure, though that reading is the publisher's own analysis rather than a company statement.
How it fits the Gemini line.
Google's previous flagship, Gemini 3 Pro, arrived in November 2025, and Gemini 3.1 Pro followed in February 2026. Winzheng reports that Google briefly considered a Gemini 3.5 Pro release but did not ship it, shifting its focus to the Flash line instead. The most recent update the report mentions is Gemini 3.8 Flash. Between November 2025 and February 2026, Google's Pro releases arrived about three months apart, which gives some context for how quickly a successor might follow. Google has not said whether the next Pro model will follow the same cadence.
What is still unknown.
The reports do not give an exact release date, and Digitrendz notes that Google has not committed to one. Developers planning around the model should expect an early post-training version first, which may differ from the final product in behaviour and capability. Because the company has described the timing as an intention, the coverage gives no firm date to plan around. Because the company has not said what the early version will include, it is not clear whether the first public release will be a full flagship or a narrower model. Readers in other time zones who want to catch a launch livestream can convert the US start time with the free world clock at /en/world-clock.