Google DeepMind’s new leader Koray Kavukcuoglu confirmed in late September 2026 that Gemini 4 has entered early post-training, with internal testing underway in the Antigravity coding platform, and stated the team intends to release an initial version “as soon as possible” and “much earlier” than year-end. This follows the November 2025 launch of Gemini 3 and the shelving of a planned Gemini 3.5 Pro update amid leadership changes and a shift toward faster Flash variants. Competitive pressure from rapid OpenAI and Anthropic frontier releases has sharpened focus on closing the gap, while prediction markets reflect strong trader consensus around an October or November window driven by the fresh timeline signals and ongoing post-training progress.