Just three weeks after its last large language model release, Google LLC today launched Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber.
The two LLMs are based on the same technical foundation. The primary difference is that Gemini 3.8 Flash is a general-purpose model while Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is designed for cybersecurity researchers. The latter algorithm is available through a new early access initiative, the Fairwind Program, that also made its debut today.
Google put Gemini 3.8 Flash to the test by having it complete 16 artificial intelligence benchmarks. According to Google, it outperformed Claude Opus 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol across nine of the tests.
One of the evaluations that the model completed more accurately is Terminal-Bench 1.1, which measures LLMs’ ability to tackle multistep coding tasks. The other benchmarks spanned use cases such as financial data analysis and chart comprehension.
Gemini 3.8 Flash also achieved competitive performance on the benchmarks that rival LLMs completed better. It scored 73.7% on DeepSWE-1.1, which evaluates AI models’ ability to automate long-horizon coding tasks. That put Gemini 3.8 Flash 1% ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol and a few fractions of a percent behind Opus 5.
“These performance gains stem from a core design choice: 3.8 Flash works harder,” Google executives Tulsee Doshi and Raluca Ada Popa wrote in a blog post. “On complex tasks, it exhibits greater diligence — executing extra reasoning steps, and calling tools iteratively. At times, the model might use more tokens to maximize performance, especially at higher effort levels.”
Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, the other LLM that Google introduced today, also offers competitive performance. It scored 86.2% on the CyberGym benchmark, which tests LLMs’ ability to spot vulnerabilities in C and C++ code. Claude Mythos 5 scored 83.8% while GPT-5.6 Sol managed 83.6%.
Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is available through an early access program called the Fairwind Program. It’s open to government agencies, critical infrastructure operators and tech firms responsible for “securing widespread software foundations.”
Google says there are more than 650 participants on launch. The group includes Snowflake Inc., CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., Datadog Inc. and other major software companies.
Fairwind Program participants can use Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber with a technology called CodeMender. It’s a harness, a collection of prompts, code files and other technical assets. CodeMender was created by Google DeepMind to improve LLMs’ ability to find vulnerabilities, evaluate their severity and develop patches.
Google engineers are using Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber internally to speed up their work. According to the company, the developers of Chrome found that the LLM produces “2.6 times more correct patches” to browser vulnerabilities than rivals. Another Google team used Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber to find a “critical foundational vulnerability” that would have taken months to uncover manually.
