Google Launches Gemini 4 Argon, Its First Frontier Model Since Gemini 3

Google Releases Gemini 4 Argon

Google has launched Gemini 4 Argon, its first major frontier model release since Gemini 3 in late 2025. The company says Argon delivers frontier reasoning and improved performance across complex workflows, while cutting down on the hedging, repetition, and cliches that continue to plague AI chatbots.

Google claims Argon outperforms rival models including GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1, and Claude Opus 5.5 across a range of benchmarks spanning coding, cybersecurity, science, finance, and law.

Internal Uses and Rollout

Google says it is already putting Argon to use internally, including finding and patching cybersecurity vulnerabilities, halving the computing power needed to run YouTube's comments section, and debugging the drone physics simulator for Alphabet's drone delivery company Wing.

The model is rolling out to Pro and Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app and AI mode in Search, as well as to Ultra subscribers on the agentic development platform Antigravity. It remains unclear when, or if, Argon will become available to Plus subscribers or free users.

Pricing and Competition

Argon is launching with an introductory price of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, around a fifth the cost of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic's Fable 5 models. Even after those costs double at the end of November, when the introductory period finishes, Google says Argon will still be significantly cheaper than its frontier rivals on a per-token basis, though this does not necessarily translate to lower costs in practice, as models can use different numbers of tokens for the same tasks.

The public rollout follows a limited release to a select set of trusted cyber defenders who tested the model for potential risks, in line with other recent frontier model launches. Argon arrives just a day after Meta announced its own frontier model, Muse Wonder Full, a reminder of how quickly the balance of power can shift in AI and that the frontier is far from a two-horse race.

Sources: Theverge · Thenewstack · Engadget