Google's new coding model beats OpenAI, Anthropic while costing less

Google on Wednesday introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash model, its third Flash release in six weeks. CEO Sundar Pichai said the latest reasoning and coding model outperformed larger frontier models, including Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, in autonomously solving complex engineering problems at a fraction of the cost. Google also introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber for cybersecurity.