Google I/O 2026: Gemini 3.5 Flash and Managed Agents API Launched

Google unveiled Gemini 3.5 Flash at its I/O 2026 developer conference on May 19, making it generally available the same day across the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, Vertex AI, Android Studio, and the Gemini app.

Performance

Gemini 3.5 Flash outperforms Gemini 3.1 Pro across key coding and agentic benchmarks: 76.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, 83.6% on MCP Atlas, and 84.2% on CharXiv Reasoning. It runs 4× faster than comparable frontier models and is priced at $1.50 per million input tokens and $9 per million output tokens, with a 1M-token context window.

Managed Agents API

The headline developer feature is the new Managed Agents API. A single API call provisions a fully isolated Linux environment where the agent can reason, use tools, execute code, manage files, and browse the web — with state and files persisting across multi-turn sessions. This abstracts the infrastructure setup that previously required significant engineering effort.

Antigravity 2.0

Google also announced Antigravity 2.0, its agent-first development platform. The Antigravity agent is built on Gemini 3.5 Flash and is available via the Interactions API and Google AI Studio. Combined with Managed Agents, developers can build production-grade agentic pipelines from a single API endpoint.

Source: Google Developers Blog, MarkTechPost