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New Gemini
00:21:26
Google launched Gemini 3.6 Flash and started pretraining Gemini 4. China weighed tightening AI export controls, Bessent said the US would probe Chinese model distillation, Apple prepped a Klarna-backed leasing program, and OpenAI passed 10M Codex and Work users.
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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, July 21, 2026 I'm Brian McCullough. Today Google launched Gemini 3.6 and started pre training Gemini 4. China weighed tightening AI export controls. Besant said the US would probe Chinese model distillation. Apple prepped a Klarna backed leasing program and OpenAI passed 1010 million Codex and work users. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Every day shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. Now you can make your voice heard too. Vanguard Investor Choice makes it easy to set your proxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds. Whether you hold a Vanguard fund directly or through another brokerage firm, all it takes is a few clicks to select your proxy voting preference and be heard on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com investorchoice to learn more. It's your shares. It's your voice. It's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of their index funds and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor I told you they had been a bit too quiet. Google today launched Gemini 3.6 flash 3.5 flashlight and 3.5 flash cyber and says it has started its most ambitious pre training run yet set for Gemini 4. But most importantly for these new models, Google says Gemini 3.6 Flash delivers better coding knowledge, work and multimodal performance while reducing output token usage by up to 17%. Even if you charge more for tokens, if you have to use less of them, it's a win, right? But also Google has priced Gemini 3.6 flash lower than then 3.5 flash at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens. Gemini 3.5 flashlight is priced at $0.30 and $2.50 respectively. Quoting 9 to 5 Google compared to 3.5 flash, the new model consumes 17% fewer output tokens per the Artificial Analysis index while taking quote fewer reasoning steps and tool calls to accomplish multi step workflows. At the same time, it's priced lower at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens versus $9 per million output tokens. In terms of coding performance, Gemini 3.6 flash quote delivers higher precision with fewer unwanted code edits and reduced execution loops than its predecessor. Specifically, it generates higher quality and more reliable production ready code as seen in Deepsui 49% versus 37% and shows significant improvement in ML research as seen in M bench at 63.9% versus 49.7%. For knowledge work, the model scores 1421 on GDP Val AA versus 1349. Computer use capabilities go from 78.4% to 83%. The knowledge cutoff date for this new model finally advances from January 2025 to March 2026. The company also announced Gemini 3.5 flashlight for high throughput and and low latency tasks like agentic search and document processing. Google says it offers significantly better quality than 3.1 flashlight from March, while pricing is $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per 1 million output tokens. The final announcement today is Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber for finding and fixing security vulnerabilities. Flash serves as the foundation given its performance and efficiency, with the goal of detecting, validating and patching code security issues at scale and at a lower price per token than larger models. Google's codemander tool uses multiple 3.5 flash cyber agents. Access is initially for governments and trusted partners, quote as part of a limited access pilot program. This will give frontline defenders a head start in finding and fixing critical vulnerabilities before they can be exploited while mitigating against broader misuse. Gemini 3.6 flash and 3.5 flashlight are available today in the Gemini app, and with the latter model also coming to search, developers can access them through Google AntiGravity AI Studio and Android Studio. Looking ahead, Google reiterates that Gemini 3.5 Pro is currently testing with partners with broad availability as soon as it's ready. Meanwhile, the DeepMind team is already focusing on building the next generation of models. We have already started our most ambitious pre training run yet for Gemini 4 and can't wait to share more. End quote now quoting CNBC, Gemini 3.5 flash cyber is designed to detect and patch software vulnerabilities and will initially be available only to governments and trusted partners through a limited access pilot. Google said the specialized model runs at a lower price per token than other larger models. That could help Google narrow its cybersecurity gap with Anthropic, which has built an early lead in automated code defense. The broader lineup reflects Google's bet that price and efficiency can help offset its slower timing in several key product categories. Artificial analysis data shows Gemini Flash already undercuts comparable models from anthropic, OpenAI and Chinese rivals on cost, according to the company. Gemini 3.6 flash, the stronger of the two new models, is cheaper per task than GPT 5.6 Terramax, Kimi K3 and Quinn 3.7 Max, while 3.5 flashlight costs just a fraction of that. The rollout comes on the eve of Alphabet earnings and as Chinese rivals gain momentum, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 grew enough demand that the company limited new subscriptions and API access because of capacity constraints, while Alibaba is only teasing Qin 3.8 max, which it said trails only Anthropics Fable 5 in overall performance. That demand highlights the other side of the AI race. Building a competitive model is only part of the challenge. Companies also need enough computing capacity to serve at scale. Google has a potential advantage through its custom chips, cloud infrastructure and ability to design models and hardware together, although the company has faced capacity constraints of its own. End quote. Meanwhile, there continue to be signs that no sooner than open weight, Chinese models have had their moment again. Then the window may shut on them again. Quoting the FT Chinese regulators are considering tightening export controls on artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies as the US China rivalry intensifies in cutting edge AI regulators led by the Ministry of Commerce have been consulting leading domestic AI and chip making groups on how to prevent China's advanced technologies and star startups from being acquired by the west, according to two people involved in the discussions. EMFCOM talked to AI Companies including Alibaba, ByteDance and Zhipu on limiting the transfer of key data for the training of their models overseas, as well as allowing their model weights to be downloaded by foreign users. The people said China would still let overseas customers access the models and services. However, China's AI Lab moonshot last week released its Kimi K3 model that exceeded Anthropic's flagship Opus 4.8 by most of the benchmarks, demonstrating that China has significantly narrowed its gap with the US in terms of frontier AI. The leading Chinese models from Moonshot as well as Deepseek are so called open Weight, which allow users to download to their local servers and customize to their particular needs. Meanwhile, leading US models from Anthropic and OpenAI are closed. MFCom has also sought views on possible restrictions that would prevent overseas chip makers including Qualcomm and TSMC from producing advanced semiconductors based on designs developed by Chinese companies such as Huawei, Alibaba and ByteDance, according to the people. Potential restrictions could also be imposed on the overseas acquisition of strategic technology groups in areas such as agentic AI, the people said. This is mainly to address a loophole that Beijing believes led to Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a deal that was subsequently ordered to be unwound by Chinese authorities. The new measures could be incorporated into the next revision of China's catalog of technologies prohibited or restricted from export, the people said, reflecting Beijing's growing confidence that it has established a global lead in some areas of AI. Most of the proposals are still under discussion, with regulators weighing industry feedback before making a final decision, according the people. They added that tech companies have told regulators that some of these tighter measures would slow down their AI development and hurt China's potential to win the technology race. The catalog is one of China's three main export control regimes, alongside two control lists covering dual use items. Its most recent revision in 2025 added several lithium ion battery manufacturing technologies to the list of restricted exports, building on existing controls over strategically important technologies such as rare earth extraction and processing. The update being discussed and negotiate would be the most significant in years, according to the people. End quote. Now, if the window doesn't shut on one side of the Pacific, it could shut on the other side just as easily. The American frontier models don't like being undercut on price, especially when performance is increasingly comparable. And they have been claiming for a while now that the only reason the Chinese models can leapfrog them is because of distillation, basically allegedly using the US Frontier models to reverse engine engineer in a way and train competitive Chinese models. Quoting cnbc, US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on Tuesday said the Trump administration will look into whether Chinese artificial intelligence models have been distilled from American models, stating that the government does not support IP theft. If we see especially that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft, besant told Fox Business Mornings with Maria on Tuesday. Besant said the technical term for this theft is called distillation, which is an AI training method where a small, less capable model is built using outputs from an existing, stronger model. Anthropic sent a letter to the U.S. senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban affairs last month alleging that the Chinese tech company Alibaba had carried out the largest known distillation attack against it to date. The US and China are planning to hold talks around AI in September, according to a report from Reuters on Tuesday. Besant will represent the US during the discussions, the report said. We are finding watermarks of our US large language models on many of the Chinese models, and that's unacceptable, besant said on Tuesday. We are going to be looking at that in the coming days or weeks, end quote. When critical company knowledge isn't documented, there's a major ripple effect. Work becomes inconsistent, tools don't get adopted, and knowledge walks out the door when someone leaves. Thankfully, our sponsor Scribe was built to fix that. Their Workflow AI platform is trusted by nearly half of the Fortune 500 to capture workflows in real time. Here's how it works. You turn on the Scribe browser extension or desktop app, do a process as you normally would, and Scribe will build a guide as you go. It automatically redacts sensitive information and even suggests improvements to your existing workflows. To see what Scribe could look like for your org, head to Scribe how ridehome and mention Ride home for your first month of Scribe capture free on select plans. That's S C R I B E How ridehome I thought they already had something like this, but Mark Gurman says Apple plans to launch Apple Upgrade, a leasing program for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch in partnership with Klarna in the US Next week, quoting Bloomberg. The new service, planned to launch July 28, will support most iPhone, Mac, iPad and Apple Watch models, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple is partnering with Klarna as the financial backer for the program, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced initiatives. The initiative will launch initially, at least in the US and will be available both in its physical retail stores and online. Shares of Klarna jumped as much as 11% on the news. The Apple Upgrade service will work like a subscription, and users can pay off the device early during their term, upgrade early to a new model, or keep it at the end of the leasing period. In certain cases, those transactions will incur an additional fee, like a car lease. It can also be returned at the end of the term. Leases for iPhones and Apple watches will run for 24 months, while Mac and iPad plans will run for 36 months. Users will need to be approved for the program via a soft credit check. The new program will launch weeks after Apple raised prices by hundreds of dollars across Macs, iPads and other devices in response to an industry wide memory shortage. Apple is also widely expected to hike iPhone prices when the new models are unveiled in September. Apple plans to advertise the program as a way to have lower payments versus current financing programs. The company is planning to discontinue new enrollments for its current iPhone payment programs, the iPhone upgrade program, and standard financing to make way for the Apple Upgrade initiative. Unlike the iPhone upgrade program of today, Apple Upgrade doesn't include AppleCare. Certain devices, including the Apple Watch SE entry level iPad, iPhone 16 and Macneo aren't eligible. Business and education purchases are also excluded. Apple had been eyeing its own in house iPhone and hardware subscription program before canceling the plan in 2024. By partnering with Klarna Inst, Apple gets the benefit of offering such a way to buy its products without taking on the financial responsibility End quote. Back to AI real quick OpenAI says it now has 10 million people using Codex and ChatGPT work, nearly doubling usage from earlier this month when the company announced ChatGPT work. Quoting implicator AI, ChatGPT work is the part of ChatGPT built for longer research, analysis and finished deliverables, while Codex remains dedicated to software development. According to OpenAI's help center page, the account arrives less than two weeks after the implicator's July 10 coverage noted OpenAI's earlier claim that Codex alone had more than 5 million weekly users. OpenAI says ChatGPT itself has more than 900 million weekly users, a much larger base than the agent products now being measured. OpenAI did not separate Codex users from ChatGPT work users in the combined tally. They also do not say whether the count means weekly active users, monthly active users, people who started one agent task, or people who completed reviewed work. OpenAI's help page says work and codecs draw from the same agentic usage and credit pool, and that the amount used depends on task size, complexity, model and surface. The June data covered Codex only. In a June 25th paper, researchers using OpenAI data reported that weekly active Codex users increased more than five fold between January 1 and June 1. In the last 28 days of the observation period, 17.3% of organizational users who were active on ChatGPT or Codex used Codex, compared with fewer than 1% of active individual users. The study also warned that OpenAI workers were an unusually favorable environment, but with high model familiarity, low marginal cost and broad internal support. Finally today, Garmin has launched the Circa Smart Band, a $200 screenless fitness tracker that monitors more than 80 activities with an up to 10 day battery life to compete with offerings from Whoop. Quoting the Verge, Garmin announced a new Smart Band today designed to track advanced fitness and wellness features without a screen to eliminate distractions and push its battery Life up to 10 days between charges. Similar to competing products like the Whoop 5.0 and Google's recently announced Fitbit Air, the Circa uses a combination of heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature and motion sensors to monitor your health and activities around the clock, but without any subscription fees. The Garmin Circa is available now through the company's online store for $199.99 and comes with an adjustable fabric strap in several different colors that can be worn on the wrist or as an armband. Google's Fitbit Air is $99, with an additional $99 per year annual Google Health Premium subscription that unlocks advanced features, while Whoop's latest hardware is only available with subscriptions that start at $199 per year. The smart band can track more than 80 different activities, such as running or yoga, that are selectable through the ACC Garmin Connect app or using its single side button as a shortcut to your favorite. Through the app, you can monitor your training progress, including the effectiveness of a workout and whether your body is ready for your next training session or would benefit more from a day of rest. When worn day and night, the Circa can keep tabs on health metrics, including your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation that can help detect conditions such as asthma and sleep apnea. In the morning, it can provide a detailed breakdown of your sleep stages, breathing and heart rate that contribute to an overall sleep score so you can compare the quality of your rest to previous nights. Women can also use the Circa's skin temperature monitoring to track their menstrual cycles for, quote, better period predictions and past ovulation estimates, end quote. If you check my Twitter Ryan McC, you will see that our podcast puppy Archie has a paw problem and is wearing a cone of shame. Talk to you tomorrow.