Google is restructuring its recently launched strike team dedicated to AI coding tools, shifting its focus to what it calls "midtraining" to close the gap with rival Anthropic, according to sources. The reorganization comes after the departure of several key executives.
The move reflects deepening competition in the AI coding assistant space, where Anthropic's Claude has gained traction among developers. Google's strike team, formed months ago, was originally tasked with improving the company's coding models but is now being retooled to address specific performance gaps.
Sources indicate the team will now prioritize the midtraining phase — the process of refining a pre-trained model on specialized datasets — rather than broader model development. The exact scope of executive departures and their impact on the team's timeline was not specified.
For Google, the effort is critical to retaining developer mindshare against Anthropic, which has aggressively courted the coding market. The company must also contend with strong entries from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and other startups in this space.
Critics question whether a single team reorg can overcome deeper cultural or structural challenges at Google, which has historically struggled to move quickly compared to nimbler rivals.