Google's Skimaki AI: Closing the Coding Gap?

Google's AI research unit is set to release a new model called 3.8 Flash, or "Skimaki." This model is designed to significantly upgrade Google's coding capabilities. Employees say it could help Google catch up to competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic in this area. In internal tests, Google engineers preferred 3.8 Flash over Anthropic’s Opus model. What's interesting is that the Flash model series is smaller, cheaper, and faster to run. This allows multiple teams to develop approaches at once. A strong debut for Flash 3.8 could be important for Google, especially after recent setbacks in its AI development. This matters because agentic coding has become a premier business use case for AI.