Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai used Wednesday's earnings call to mount a forceful defense of Google's artificial intelligence strategy, pushing back against concerns that the company is losing ground to rivals after delaying a flagship AI model and falling behind in AI coding. Investors have become uneasy over Google's decision to delay the release of Gemini 3.5 Pro, a model originally expected in June. During the call, Pichai acknowledged areas needing improvement, citing "coding and agentic coding" as an example. Rather than focus on the delay, Pichai emphasized Gemini Flash, Google's lower-cost, faster model, and highlighted the release of Gemini 3.6 Flash earlier this week, which improved by more than 10 points on a coding benchmark compared with its predecessor while using fewer tokens. Google also introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Flash Cyber. Pichai said "people will be pleased" when Google unveils Gemini 4, describing it as a "very ambitious effort," and revealed that the Gemini 4 roadmap envisions launching new models "almost at a monthly cadence."