Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash introduces ‘thinking budgets’ that cut AI costs by 600% when turned down

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Google has launched Gemini 2.5 Flash, a major upgrade to its AI lineup that gives businesses and developers unprecedented control over how much “thinking” their AI performs. The new model, released today in preview through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, represents a strategic effort to deliver improved reasoning capabilities while maintaining competitive pricing in the increasingly crowded AI market. The model introduces what Google calls a “thinking budget” — a mechanism that allows developers to specify how much computational power should be allocated to reasoning through complex problems before generating a response. This approach aims to address a fundamental tension in today’s AI marketplace: more sophisticated reasoning typically comes at the cost of higher latency and pricing. “We know cost and latency matter for a number of developer use cases, and ... Read full article.