Google delays Gemini 3.5 Pro to July and loses key researchers to Anthropic

Google slipped Gemini 3.5 Pro's general availability from June to July 2026, despite Sundar Pichai's earlier signaling and an I/O tease in May, citing the need for more early-tester feedback and tweaks. The quiet delay was read by developers as a sign of execution challenges at a moment when rivals are shipping aggressively.

More damaging is the talent story: top researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, who helped build Gemini, are leaving for Anthropic. The community reads this as evidence the AI talent war is actively reshaping the balance of power among labs, with Anthropic — fresh off its Mythos restoration and Alibaba accusations — pulling senior DeepMind staff at a sensitive time.

The context cuts both ways. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis continues to project confidence, predicting AGI by 2030 and arguing creativity and 'taste' will become the most valuable human contributions; James Manyika this week promoted a Daedalus volume on AI for science featuring 33 contributors. But losing named architects of your flagship model while delaying its GA undercuts that narrative.

Google did ship consumer and developer wins alongside the slip — Gemini 3.5 Live Translate across 100+ language pairs, Xcode integration for Apple developers, and expanded local Gemma 4 12B agentic workflows. Watch whether the July GA holds, whether more departures follow Adler and Pritzel, and how Gemini 3.5 Pro benchmarks against GPT-5.6 and Claude's frontier line once it finally lands.