Google Is Already Behind on AI Coding. Brin Memo Confirms It.

Google cofounder Sergey Brin has acknowledged in an internal memo that Google is falling behind competitors in AI coding capabilities, prompting the formation of a dedicated strike team at DeepMind. The urgency stems from a measurable gap—Google CFO Anat Ashkenazi reported ~50% AI-generated code versus Anthropic's 70-90%—creating a compounding disadvantage where labs that code more with AI ship faster, build better models, and iterate further ahead. Dario Amodei predicts the industry is six to twelve months from AI handling most software engineering work end-to-end, raising the stakes for Google to close the gap before the flywheel tilts irrecoverably.

• •Sergey Brin's memo is a rare public admission from a cofounder that Google is losing ground in AI coding capabilities, indicating the gap is significant enough to warrant executive-level alarm.
• •Google's 'strike team' is led by Sebastian Borgeaud with direct involvement from both Brin and CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu, signaling this is a top-priority effort rather than a routine R&D initiative.
• •The compounding flywheel effect (more AI code → faster development → better models → more AI code) means the gap is not merely numerical—it creates structural advantages that widen over time.