Google CEO Sundar Pichai strongly defended the company’s AI strategy during Alphabet’s earnings call, addressing investor concerns over delays in key AI models and increasing competition from industry rivals.
Investors have been closely watching Google’s decision to postpone the launch of Gemini 3.5 Pro, which was originally expected in June. The delay raised concerns about Google’s position in AI coding and autonomous AI agents, especially as competitors such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and several Chinese AI companies continue to accelerate model releases.
Responding to analysts’ questions, Pichai acknowledged that Google has areas to improve while maintaining confidence in the company’s AI leadership. He said, “We’ve had clearly frontier models. There are many attributes on which we are still at the frontier; there are areas where we’ve acknowledged we need to improve and coding and agentic coding is an example of that.”
Instead of focusing on the delayed Gemini 3.5 Pro, Pichai highlighted the progress of Gemini Flash, Google’s faster and more cost-efficient AI model, which is being used across cybersecurity, customer service, data analytics, and enterprise software.
He also pointed to the recently launched Gemini 3.6 Flash, saying it improved by more than 10 points on a coding benchmark while using fewer tokens than its predecessor. Google also introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Flash Cyber, a cybersecurity-focused AI model, while Gemini 3.5 Pro remains in partner testing.
Looking ahead, Pichai expressed confidence in the company’s next-generation model, saying, “I think people will be pleased” when Google introduces Gemini 4, describing it as a “very ambitious effort.” He added that Google is developing a significantly larger model and plans to release new AI models almost every month.
Despite investor concerns over AI leadership, Alphabet reported 82% growth in its cloud business during the quarter, well above the market estimate of 64%. The company also increased its capital expenditure forecast by $15 billion, raising its planned spending to $195 billion-$205 billion.
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