Alphabet’s Gemini 3.5 Pro Is Late and the Stock Is Slipping. Is the AI Leader Falling Behind?
When Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash at its I/O developer conference in mid-May, the company said the model’s more powerful sibling, Gemini 3.5 Pro, would arrive in June. June came and went. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the flagship AI (artificial intelligence) model is months behind schedule as Google works to improve…
When Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash at its I/O developer conference in mid-May, the company said the model’s more powerful sibling, Gemini 3.5 Pro, would arrive in June. June came and went.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the flagship AI (artificial intelligence) model is months behind schedule as Google works to improve its capabilities in coding — and that some inside the company worry rivals OpenAI and Anthropic are shipping models that have passed Gemini by.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
After peaking at $408.61 earlier this year, Alphabet shares closed Friday at $346.77, a decline of about 15%. That’s a modest pullback by most standards. But it’s a notable wobble for a stock that has been one of the market’s favorite ways to bet on AI.
So, is the AI leader actually falling behind? Gemini 3.5 Pro is late — that much is settled. But does the delay change the investment case? Alphabet’s own numbers argue that it doesn’t. At least not yet.
Image source: Alphabet Inc
A flagship model stuck in testing
The timeline is what makes this delay notable. Google launched Gemini 3 in late 2025, and the 3.5 generation was supposed to continue a rapid release cadence, with the Flash version announced in May and the Pro version promised a month later.
Instead, according to Bloomberg‘s reporting, Google updated the data used to train Gemini in an attempt to improve its coding skills, and the results were disappointing.
Google hasn’t announced a new launch date.
“We’re currently testing 3.5 Pro, an upgraded Flash model, and other models with partners,” the company said in a statement, adding that it is “shipping quickly across a wide range of models while keeping them highly cost-effective for customers.”
After all, coding is arguably the main battleground for AI labs right now, and it’s a big part of what enterprise customers pay for. A flagship model that can’t yet clear the company’s own bar there is an uncomfortable place for Google to sit while rivals keep shipping.
And the stakes are bigger than one product date. Alphabet expects capital expenditures of as much as $190 billion this year, much of it going toward the infrastructure behind its AI push. Spending on that scale assumes Gemini stays competitive at the frontier. A model that slips by a month is noise. A pattern of slipping models would worry me.
A powerful business
So far, there’s no sign of that pattern in the results. Alphabet’s revenue climbed 22% year over year to $109.9 billion in the first quarter, making it 11 quarters in a row of double-digit growth. Google Cloud revenue jumped 63% year over year to $20.0 billion, accelerating from 48% growth in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 34% in the third quarter. The cloud segment’s operating income roughly tripled year over year to $6.6 billion. And Google Search & other revenue rose 19%, with management saying search queries hit an all-time high.
Demand for Gemini itself looks healthy, too. CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s cloud backlog nearly doubled from the prior quarter to over $460 billion, and that its models were processing over 16 billion tokens per minute through direct customer use, up 60% in three months.
“Our AI investments and full stack approach are lighting up every part of the business,” Pichai said in the company’s first-quarter earnings release.
In other words, customers don’t appear to have been waiting on Gemini 3.5 Pro before signing contracts this spring.
Of course, the delay still deserves attention. Alphabet trades at about 25 times forward earnings — a price that assumes growth rates remain robust. If Gemini were to fall a full generation behind OpenAI and Anthropic, the AI demand filling that cloud backlog could become harder to defend, and the AI features now driving search usage could start to lag rivals. Ultimately, however, I don’t think one late model gets Alphabet anywhere close to that point. But it’s the right risk to watch.
Fortunately, investors won’t wait long for fresh evidence. Alphabet is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Wednesday, July 22. I’ll be watching two things: Google Cloud’s growth rate and any launch timing management offers on Gemini 3.5 Pro.
Should you buy stock in Alphabet right now?
Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $371,842!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,244,783!*
That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by 4x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of July 19, 2026.
Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Alphabet’s Gemini 3.5 Pro Is Late and the Stock Is Slipping. Is the AI Leader Falling Behind? was originally published by The Motley Fool
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
