As of September 6, 2025, there’s active speculation in the AI community that Google’s upcoming Gemini 3.0 model (or an early version of it) has been quietly released on OpenRouter under disguised names. OpenRouter, a platform aggregating access to hundreds of AI models via a unified API, announced two new “stealth models” yesterday: Sonoma Alpha and Sonoma Sky Alpha (also referred to as Sonoma Dusk Alpha in some posts). These are free to use, support a massive 2 million token context window, and are described as “maximally intelligent” with prompts logged by the creator for training—features that align closely with expected Gemini 3 specs.
Key Details from the Announcement and Speculation
- Announcement: OpenRouter posted about these models on September 5, 2025, calling them “stealth” (implying anonymity to avoid direct attribution). They emphasize high intelligence, 2M context (double the 1M seen in Gemini 2.5 Pro), and free access, but note that the provider handles logging for improvement.
- Why Gemini 3.0?
- Leaks from July-August 2025 referenced “gemini-beta-3.0-pro” and “gemini-beta-3.0-flash” in Google’s internal code (e.g., Gemini CLI repo), hinting at variants with enhanced reasoning (“Deep Think”) and multi-million token contexts—matching the 2M here.
- Community tests and posts suggest strong performance in reasoning, speed, and multimodal tasks, outperforming current Gemini 2.5 models but falling short of full Gemini-like polish in some outputs (e.g., one user called it “disappointing” compared to known Gemini quality).
- The “Sonoma” naming (evoking California’s wine country, near Google’s HQ) fuels the theory, as does the free tier—Google has previously offered experimental Gemini models for free on OpenRouter to gather data (e.g., Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental in March 2025).
- Alternative Theories: Not everyone agrees—some speculate it’s an xAI Grok variant (due to “maximally intelligent” phrasing echoing xAI’s ethos) or a new Chinese model. However, the 2M context and free logging point more toward Google testing pre-release.
Broader Gemini 3.0 Context
Google hasn’t officially announced Gemini 3.0, but rumors from mid-2025 predict a late 2025 release (preview in December, full in early 2026), building on Gemini 2.5’s “thinking” mode with:
- Trillion-parameter scale for superior reasoning in code, math, and multimodality (text, images, video, 3D).
- Integrated self-correction to reduce hallucinations.
- On-device variants like Gemini Nano 3 for Pixels.
These stealth models could be betas, allowing Google to benchmark against rivals like GPT-5 or Grok 4 without fanfare. OpenRouter’s history (e.g., hosting “Quasar Alpha” in April 2025, speculated as GPT-5/Gemini 3) supports this pattern of anonymous drops.
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