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New AI models drop so frequently, it’s difficult to even think of a week that’s not particularly packed with them, but these last few days have proven especially fruitful, giving us everything from Claude Sonnet 5.5 to GPT-6.1 Sol. For a while now, we’d been wondering when Google would finally be ready to introduce the next big evolution of Gemini, and today the company finally starts outlining exactly what to expect.
Google’s next frontier model is Gemini 4 Argon. As Google explains, access is getting started with a very limited group of testers, focusing on cybersecurity defense. Once Google’s convinced that Gemini 4 Argon is sufficiently robust, access will start expanding to Google AI Ultra subscribers.
Unsurprisingly, Google is making a big push to highlight the performance of Gemini 4 Argon, and while it’s not running circles around the competition, the data does reveal an edge in many areas:
While Gemini 4 Argon makes steady gains in tasks like coding, maybe its most pronounced win here occurs when Gemini is given some long-horizon legal assignments to tackle in that Harvey’s Legal Agent Benchmark. Google also points out Argon’s finesse with economic and general business tasks.
Like many of the other flagship models we’re following, the improvements Google’s been prioritizing for Gemini 4 Argon aren’t just directly about the model’s raw performance. Those include efforts to strengthen Gemini’s resistance to being used for nefarious purposes, or distilling the model in order to reproduce its functionality.
Ultimately, the benchmarks are impressive, but we’re going to want some actual hands-on experience with Gemini 4 Argon before we start getting really excited about it — and like we said, that’s not happening today. Google’s not even offering an ETA much beyond “soon,” and when Argon does eventually open for public consumption, it’s going to be initially limited to Google’s highest paid AI tier. API customers can expect pricing of $2 for every million input tokens (cached tokens will be available for 95% off), and $10 per million output tokens.
As we know, we’ll eventually see Gemini 4 Argon trickle down to all us hoi polloi on unpaid Gemini, too — just don’t hold your breath for it.
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