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Ongoing case: Google's Gemini models 12 stories

Pichai says Google's rollbacks fell a third after Gemini 4 Argon launched

In a Big Technology interview with Alex Kantrowitz, uploaded 20 October, Pichai gave Google's own figures for Gemini 4 Argon and a commitment on power for data-centre projects.

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Check our sources · 10 facts from 4 sources
Sundar Pichai: Path To Recursive Self-Improvement, Compute Allocation Dilemma, Future AI Interfaces: a video from Alex Kantrowitz on YouTubeVideo: Alex Kantrowitz on YouTube
watch on YouTube · Video still, linking to YouTube

Key points

  1. Pichai said that in the four weeks since Google launched Argon it saw a "1/3 decrease in like rollbacks" (38:24).
  2. He also cited a 30% increase, but the captions render the measure as "sales" in one cut and "CLS" in another, so what was measured is unclear (38:12).
  3. Pichai said Google is "committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power and we cover the 100% cost of our power needs uh for these projects" (39:27).

What happened

Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, answered Alex Kantrowitz's questions in an interview published on the Big Technology YouTube channel on 20 October 2026. Big Technology posted an 11-minute video on 24 October titled "Sundar Pichai: Anthropic, SpaceX, TPUs in Space and more".

Asked what share of Google's code AI now writes, Pichai said the number is "meaningless" because every part of code Google touches is influenced by AI. He said that in the four weeks since Google launched Argon it saw a 30% increase in a measure the automatic captions render as "sales" (the 24 October video's captions give "CLS"), and a one-third decrease in rollbacks.

Asked about opposition to data centres, Pichai said Google is committed to bringing incremental power and covering 100% of the cost of its power needs for these projects. Asked why Google backs Anthropic, he said that when Google looked at Anthropic's founding team it was clear it was a world-class team that would be at the frontier, and that Google has done the same with SpaceX.

What it means for you

Our view

Treat these as a vendor's own figures about its own engineers. Google's 13 October post names Gemini 4 Argon and gives a similar rollback figure, nearly a third, with agentic code submissions up by more than 35%; Pichai's 30% figure has no clear measure behind it.

The power commitment is for "these projects", which is narrower than all Google data centres. If you are weighing Argon for coding work, ask Google which measures it uses and over what period, and track rollbacks on your own repositories during a trial.

It adds no new facts.

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Check our sources

Every sentence above is checked against these 4 sources.

1 Google CEO Sundar Pichai: AI's Infinite Possibilities, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future A...Alex Kantrowitz (Big Technology) · 7 facts Open the source archived copy

  1. The video "Google CEO Sundar Pichai: AI's Infinite Possibilities, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future A..." is on the Alex Kantrowitz (Big Technology) YouTube channel and was uploaded on 2026-10-20 (watch page).

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai: AI's Infinite Possibilities, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products; channel Alex Kantrowitz; uploadDate 2026-10-20T10:41:54-07:00
    cite

  2. Asked what share of Google's code is now written by AI (Kantrowitz recalled 25%), Pichai said "that number in our world today is like meaningless in the sense that every part of code we now touch is uh influenced by AI deeply" (37:43).

    37:32 >> You were you recently was it maybe last year you said that 25% of code uh written within Google was written by AI. What's the number today? 37:41 >> I mean, we have far I think we have almost that number in our world today is like meaningless in the sense that every part of code we now touch is uh influenced by AI deeply.
    cite

  3. Pichai said: "we've definitely in the four weeks since we've launched Argon, we've seen a 30% increase in uh sales" (38:12). The word "sales" is the automatic captions' rendering; the captions of Big Technology's shorter cut of the interview give "CLS" for the same word (04:08 in that cut, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K7494olN6s). What was measured is not clear from the captions.

    38:12 So, we've definitely in the four weeks since we've launched Argon, we've seen a 30% increase in uh sales and and and more importantly (short cut 2K7494olN6s at 04:05: we've seen a 30% increase in uh CLS)
    cite

  4. Pichai went on to say "1/3 uh 1/3 decrease in like rollbacks" (38:24), and "I think people are writing code more productively and better code with it" (38:29).

    38:22 uh almost a similar increase, you know, 1/3 uh 1/3 decrease in like rollbacks, right? And so, I think people are writing code more productively and better code with it
    cite

  5. Asked about opposition to data centres, Pichai said Google is "committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power and we cover the 100% cost of our power needs uh for these projects" (39:27).

    Toned down to what the source says
    39:25 doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power and we cover the 100% cost of our power needs uh for these projects.
    cite

  6. Asked what Google sees in Anthropic's founder, Pichai said: "Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us um you know, this was a world-class team" (34:19).

    34:19 >> Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us um you know, this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models.
    cite

  7. Pichai said Google has "always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We've done that with SpaceX, we've done that with Anthropic" (34:40).

    34:40 we've always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We've done that with SpaceX, we've done that with Anthropic
    cite
2 Google leadership: message from the CEOGoogle · 1 fact Open the source archived copy

  1. Google's blog lists "Sundar Pichai, CEO" in its navigation for the page "A message from our CEO".

    cite
3 Sundar Pichai: Anthropic, SpaceX, TPUs in Space and moreBig Technology · 24 Oct 2026 · 1 fact Open the source archived copy

  1. Big Technology's video "Sundar Pichai: Anthropic, SpaceX, TPUs in Space and more" was uploaded on 2026-10-24 and runs 664 seconds (watch page).

    cite
4 Gemini 4 Argon: Built to solve your hardest problemsGoogle · 13 Oct 2026 · 1 fact Open the source archived copy

  1. Google's post of 13 October 2026 names the model Gemini 4 Argon, and says that inside Google, Argon in Antigravity has helped teams increase agentic code submissions by more than 35% while reducing code rollbacks by nearly a third; these are Google's own figures about its own engineers. the company says

    Toned down to what the source says
    Gemini 4 Argon is now globally available today for developers and enterprises via the API.
    cite

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