Google on Thursday rolled out a revamped version of its Gemini Deep Research agent, rebuilding the tool on top of Gemini 3 Pro, the company’s latest flagship foundation model.

The new system is designed not only to generate long-form research reports, but also to function as an embeddable research engine that other developers can plug directly into their own applications.

The timing was not lost on anyone in the industry. What once looked like a broad field of AI competitors is becoming narrowed into a head-to-head sprint between two giants that now announce upgrades within the same news cycle, each determined to stay a step ahead in the escalating race for model dominance.

Google’s upgraded Deep Research system is no longer just a tool for generating polished research reports. It has broadened into a programmable research agent suited for large-scale information synthesis, built to survive massive context loads and long reasoning cycles that would normally push an LLM into error territory.

The company is positioning it as a backbone for due diligence review, drug toxicity evaluation, and other high-precision analytical tasks. The major engineering shift was the introduction of Google’s new Interactions API — a feature aimed at letting developers embed Deep Research-grade capabilities into their own products and control the agent layer more directly.

Google also disclosed plans to integrate Deep Research into a series of its core services, including Search, Finance, the Gemini app, and NotebookLM. It is edging toward an internet where people no longer hunt for information themselves; they dispatch an agent trained to do it for them. Google leaned heavily on the claim that Gemini 3 Pro is its “most factual” model so far, tuned to lower hallucination rates in long-chain reasoning tasks where a single incorrect step can ruin the entire output.

To back its performance claims, Google introduced a new benchmark called DeepSearchQA, intended to test how well an agent handles complex, multi-step information missions. It was released as open source. The company also tested the system on Humanity’s Last Exam, a notoriously difficult general-knowledge benchmark filled with obscure tasks, and on BrowserComp, which evaluates an AI agent’s ability to carry out browser-based operations.

In addition to the widely-praised Gemini 3, Deep Research topped the leaderboard on Google’s own benchmark and on Humanity’s. But OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5 Pro landed close behind in both tests and overtook Google on BrowserComp. Even those results barely had time to settle. Hours later, OpenAI announced GPT-5.2, which the company said outperforms rivals — including Google — across a wide suite of standard benchmarks.

This back-to-back rollout marked another escalation in a rivalry that has grown unusually public. The industry now watches releases from both companies like heavyweight rounds. Each upgrade arrives with the sense of a reply to the other.

Google introduced a package that pushes its agentic vision further, giving developers a programmable research companion and moving the company closer to agent-based search. OpenAI countered with a model built to strengthen its leadership in reasoning, speed, and multimodal performance.

The speed of these releases also signals how aggressively both companies are trying to define the next phase of AI development. The focus is shifting from raw model power to advanced agents that can plan, browse, run tools, complete tasks over long stretches, and handle increasingly complex workloads with minimal supervision. Whoever builds the most reliable and scalable agent layer stands to redefine how people use software, how information moves across the web, and how organizations make decisions.

For now, Google seems to be pushing deeper into agentic research systems integrated across its own ecosystem, while OpenAI continues to refine its core model lineup and deploy it across consumer and enterprise channels. Each announcement seems to trigger the next. Each benchmark update sets off another. And as these systems continue to evolve in public view, the industry’s center of gravity keeps shifting toward a true duel for AI supremacy.

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has cut its ex-gantry petrol price to N699 per liter, a reduction of N129 from the previous N828, and a move that is already reshaping competition in a market long dominated by import-driven pricing.

Sources inside the refinery confirmed the adjustment, and the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) later validated it.

“The refinery reduced the price to N699 per liter and told marketers that we can start buying the product for the festive season,” IPMAN’s national president, Abubakar Garima, told TheCable.

The price cut has added to the growing shift in Nigeria’s petroleum market. For decades, petrol prices in Nigeria were heavily anchored to the cost of imported products. Dangote’s arrival has tilted that equation. By lowering its ex-depot price to N699, the refinery is setting a benchmark that importers cannot match under current global and domestic conditions.

Aliko Dangote, who has repeatedly expressed the refinery’s goal to dominate the local market, is competing directly with importers.

“Prices are going down. The reason why prices have to go down is because we have to also compete with imports,” he said, adding that both diesel and petrol “will continue to be sold in the market at a very reasonable price.”

The cut is already putting pressure on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), which reduced pump prices across its Lagos and Abuja retail stations in late November to N900 and N940 per liter. Industry sources say that although the NNPC and independent marketers will be forced to make further adjustments once Dangote’s new price filters through the market, they will not be able to compete.

Nigeria’s long-standing dependence on imported petrol is mired in exorbitant import costs. Even when global prices eased, Nigeria faced elevated landing costs because of the weaker naira, freight charges, insurance, and port fees. During late 2024, the landing cost oscillated between N829 and N976 per liter. In November 2024, figures widely circulated by market operators, including the Major Energy Marketers Association of Nigeria (MEMAN), put the landing cost in the N970s. By October 2025, updated industry data showed a drop to the low N830s as global prices cooled and shipping routes stabilized.

Those figures explain why imported fuel cannot compete with Dangote’s new pricing. At N699, the refinery is offering a product more than N130 below the best-case import landing cost and nearly N280 below the high end seen in late 2024. This leaves NNPC and independent importers in no position to bring in foreign petrol and sell at affordable rates without incurring heavy losses.

Against this backdrop, Nigeria’s petrol import is expected to drop further. Nigeria spent N1.28 trillion on petrol imports in the third quarter of 2025, down from N2.3 trillion in Q2, but it remains a major burden on foreign exchange reserves. The drop in Q3 was tied to lower global price averages and occasional improvement in refined product availability. Nigeria’s import bill remains large because domestic output has only recently begun to scale.

In 2020, petrol imports cost N2.01 trillion. By 2021, that figure rose sharply to N4.56 trillion. In 2022, it hit N7.71 trillion. In 2023, it eased slightly to N7.51 trillion. Then came the surge in 2024: N15.42 trillion, driven by a more than 40 percent slide in the naira and higher global shipping and insurance fees.

These costs created long-standing volatility in Nigeria’s retail petrol market, forcing pump prices to chase global dynamics. With Dangote offering large volumes priced locally, that structure is beginning to shift. The refinery’s latest cut puts pressure on all fuel retailers — including NNPC — to align with domestic, rather than imported, pricing.

That shift is happening as Dangote pursues an ambitious expansion plan. The refinery, currently rated at 650,000 barrels per day, is already producing diesel, aviation fuel, and petrol. Work is ongoing to raise total output to 1.4 million barrels per day within three years, a scale that would make it the world’s largest single-site refinery.

The Federal Government has welcomed this expansion, calling it a “game-changer” with the potential to lift West Africa’s entire energy landscape. Beyond stabilizing domestic supply, the government sees Nigeria becoming a regional export hub, with refined products heading to neighboring countries and beyond.

There is also reprieve for one of the refinery’s biggest challenges. OPEC’s latest data shows Nigeria pumped 1.436 million barrels per day in November 2025, up from 1.401 million barrels per day in October. That trend gives the country more room to allocate crude for domestic refining.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s national petrol consumption has slowed. Federal data shows average daily usage fell to 52.9 million liters in November 2025. Analysts say this is linked to earlier high pump prices, changing transport habits, and the gradual entry of Dangote’s products, which are expected to stabilize supply and lower retail prices in 2026.

With the N699 price now in play, traders say the market has entered a new phase. The days when imported fuel determined domestic pricing are fading. As Dangote ramps up production in 2026, the downstream sector is shifting toward a new price anchor — one set inside Nigeria rather than offshore. However, energy analysts warn that this will be impacted by international oil prices.

Aliko Dangote has unveiled one of the boldest ideas in his business playbook career, and it has little to do with building factories. Instead, it is about re-engineering Nigeria’s capital market through a play of currency. Dangote has announced plans to list 10 percent of his $20 billion refinery on the Nigerian Exchange in 2026, a move that could fundamentally reshape the market and attract global investors seeking hard-currency returns.

He revealed this at the unveiling of the Dangote Vision 2030 roadmap in Lagos, outlining a long-term strategy centered on massive revenue growth, aggressive expansion in petrochemicals, and most notably a shift toward dollar-denominated dividends. The message was unmistakable: Dangote is positioning his companies for far greater international relevance. He confirmed that discussions are already advanced with the Nigerian Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission to finalize the structure of the offering, alongside engagements with the Ministry of Finance to secure approvals for the proposed dividend framework. As he put it succinctly: “You buy in naira, but you get dividends in dollars.”

If this plan succeeds, it will trigger a tectonic shift in Nigeria’s capital market. It will set a new benchmark that leading Nigerian banks, many of which already earn substantial dollar revenues through their African subsidiaries, will be forced to match or risk losing investor interest. In a market where capital seeks protection from currency risk, USD-denominated dividends will become a powerful magnet. If Dangote delivers this model, investors will naturally gravitate toward it, compelling others to follow. This is not just a listing; it is a strategic redesign of how value is captured and distributed in Nigeria’s financial markets.

It may not be bad for Naira provided the equities are paid for in Naira even as the dividends come in USD.

“You Buy In Naira, But You Get Dividends In Dollars”: Dangote Affirms Plan Of Refinery’s Historic NGX Listing In 2026