Gemini 3 Flash: faster, cheaper frontier reasoning

19 Dec 2025

Google has rolled out Gemini 3 Flash, a speed‑optimized variant of its recent flagship Gemini model that the company is making the default across Gemini and Google Search’s AI Mode. According to the report, Flash delivers frontier‑level reasoning while prioritizing latency and cost: it’s said to be about 3x faster and priced at roughly one quarter of Gemini 3 Pro.

Benchmarks in the newsletter highlight large gains: on the “Humanity’s Last Exam” benchmark, Gemini 3 Flash scored 33.7%, up from 11% for the previous model and nearly matching GPT‑5.2’s 34.5%. The piece claims Flash matches or exceeds 3 Pro across multiple tests while combining fast inference with real‑time web results when used in Google Search and the Gemini app.

Why it matters: Flash’s combination of high performance, low latency, and lower price positions it as a competitive threat to rivals — the newsletter frames it as a move that could further erode OpenAI’s market share by offering similarly capable reasoning at much lower cost and faster response times.