Hey, thanks for the detailed report and for quickly ruling out any overlap with an OpenAI key.
Good news: the AQ. key format isn’t the issue, your key is fine. What you’re seeing is specific to Gemini 3.8 Flash when your own Google API key is enabled. Requests to that one model with your key are currently getting rejected with 401. Other Gemini models work fine with the same key.
We’re tracking this. I can’t share an exact timeline yet, but I’ll post an update in the thread as soon as we have one.
For now, here are two options that should work:
- Keep Google API key enabled and pick a different Gemini model in the model selector, like Gemini 3.7 Flash. It should work with your key as expected, and others have confirmed this in the neighboring thread: BYOK Gemini Flash 3.8 Unauthorized User API key
- If you specifically need Gemini 3.8 Flash, turn off the Google API Key toggle in Cursor Settings > Models, and the model will run on your Cursor plan.
If you try option 1 and confirm whether Gemini 3.7 Flash works with your AQ. key, that will fully close the question about the key format. Let me know how it goes.