2026-07-08

1. Gemini 3.5 Pro gets a hard date: July 17 — but only after scrapping the base model

• Google has confirmed July 17, 2026 as the GA date for Gemini 3.5 Pro, replacing the previous "late July" window
• The cause of the delay is now explicit: Google discarded the 2.5 Pro architecture and ran a full new pre-training cycle — a deeper course-correction than the originally disclosed "token overuse / coding gaps"
• The rebuild targets math reasoning, SVG scene generation, and image quality to compete with GPT-5.6 Sol and Fable 5
• 2M context window and Deep Think reasoning mode (Ultra tier, $250/month) remain unchanged; pricing still ~$1.25/$10 per million tokens
• Why it matters: A lab announcing a model at I/O then scrapping its base architecture before GA is rare. The architectural restart, combined with four senior researchers leaving in the same week (Shazeer → OpenAI; Jumper + Adler + Pritzel → Anthropic), suggests the Gemini 3.5 Pro delay is a harder setback than Google has publicly acknowledged. The July 17 date is now a credibility marker: slip again and the talent-drain narrative hardens.
• → Gemini 3.5 Pro | Google DeepMind | (source)

2. Anthropic signs $19B, 20-year data center lease with TeraWulf — first owned physical compute

• TeraWulf (SEC 8-K, July 6, 2026 —: 20-year lease at the Justified Data campus, Hawesville, Kentucky
• ~$19 billion contracted revenue; 401 MW critical IT load; initial capacity H2 2027, full capacity early 2028
• Simultaneously, TeraWulf sold its 50.1% Abernathy stake to a Fluidstack-led group, monetizing ~$450M at a premium
• Why it matters: Every prior Anthropic compute deal has been a cloud provider arrangement or GPU rental. The 20-year owned-infrastructure lease is the first time Anthropic locks in its own physical compute layer — beyond any cloud partner's control. Combined with AWS (training), Azure/GB300 (inference), xAI Colossus ($1.25B/month), and Google TPU SPV ($35B), Anthropic now has five parallel, structurally independent supply chains. At 401 MW this Kentucky campus will be one of the largest single-tenant AI data centers in the US when it comes online in 2027–2028.
• → Anthropic | (source)