# Google says Gemini 4 has entered post-training, aims to ship before year end

> Google says Gemini 4 has entered post-training and could ship before year end.

*DeepMind chief Koray Kavukcuoglu said the model already powers an internal Google coding tool, in his first public comments since taking the role.*

By Behzad Hosseini · WireRead
Canonical: https://wireread.com/news/google-gemini-4-post-training-release

Google DeepMind's chief executive, Koray Kavukcuoglu, said on Wednesday that Gemini 4 has entered post-training, the phase covering safety testing, guardrails and behaviour tuning before a public release, and that the model is already powering Google's Antigravity coding tool internally.

Kavukcuoglu said Google wants to release Gemini 4 "much earlier" than the end of 2026, though he gave no specific date for the launch, according to [9to5Google](https://9to5google.com/2026/09/24/google-says-gemini-4-release-is-coming-as-soon-as-possible/).

The comments, made at The Information's AI Agenda Live summit on 23 September and reported the following day, were Kavukcuoglu's first public media appearance since taking over DeepMind's leadership in August, when Demis Hassabis stepped back to chair the unit and became Alphabet's chief scientist.

Google's last flagship release was Gemini 3 Pro in November 2025, followed by Gemini 3.1 Pro in February 2026. A Gemini 3.5 Pro model, announced at Google's I/O conference in May, never shipped, according to [The Next Web](https://thenextweb.com/news/gemini-4-release-kavukcuoglu-post-training).

Kavukcuoglu said Google deliberately eased off its flagship pace for a period to focus instead on its smaller Flash models, including Gemini 3.8 Flash, which was released in September.

The comments follow rivals Anthropic and OpenAI both launching new flagship models on 22 September: Claude Opus 5.5 from Anthropic, and GPT-6 Sol and Luna from OpenAI, according to the reports.

Google has not yet published a model ID, pricing or model card for Gemini 4 in its Gemini API, and it remains unclear exactly when the post-training phase will conclude.

Kavukcuoglu said he remains confident Google will continue to compete at the leading edge of AI development, despite the gap since its last full flagship release.

Post-training typically follows the larger, more computationally expensive pre-training phase, in which a model first learns from vast amounts of data, and is generally the last major stage before a model is considered ready for public release.

Kavukcuoglu did not say how long the post-training phase for Gemini 4 is expected to take, nor whether the version currently running inside Antigravity matches what the public will eventually receive.

Running Gemini 4 inside Antigravity gives Google internal usage of the model before any formal launch. It has not been announced whether consumers, developers or enterprise customers will get access first.

Kavukcuoglu said Google intends to release an early post-training version as soon as possible, because the company is excited by the results it is seeing so far.

Google has not said whether Gemini 4 will arrive as a single release or, as with recent generations, split across multiple variants such as a Pro and a Flash version launched at different points.

The company also did not clarify which quarter of 2026 it was aiming for, leaving reporters and analysts to treat the timeline as directional rather than a firm commitment.

## Key takeaways

- Google DeepMind chief Koray Kavukcuoglu said Gemini 4 has entered post-training, the pre-release testing stage.
- Gemini 4 already powers Google's internal Antigravity coding tool, Kavukcuoglu said.
- The comments followed Anthropic and OpenAI both launching new flagship models on 22 September.

## Sources

- [Google says Gemini 4 release is coming 'as soon as possible'](https://9to5google.com/2026/09/24/google-says-gemini-4-release-is-coming-as-soon-as-possible/) — 9to5Google, 2026-09-24
- [Gemini 4 is in post-training and could ship before the end of 2026](https://thenextweb.com/news/gemini-4-release-kavukcuoglu-post-training) — The Next Web, 2026-09-24