Argon rolls out to Gemini Pro and Ultra subscribers today, with Google claiming benchmark wins over GPT-6 Astra and Claude models.
Google released Gemini 4 Argon, ending a stretch in which the company sat out the frontier model race. Google says Argon delivers frontier reasoning and better performance across coding, cybersecurity, science, finance, and law workloads, and that it hedges and repeats itself less than earlier chatbots.
Argon is Google’s first major frontier release since Gemini 3 arrived in late 2025. Anthropic and OpenAI shipped strong models in the months between, and internal shakeups raised doubts about whether Google could compete at the frontier. The launch lands one day after Meta announced its own frontier model, Muse Wonder Full.
Google priced Argon at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, roughly a fifth of GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5. Those rates double at the end of November. Cheaper tokens do not always mean lower bills, since models consume different token counts for the same task.
Argon is already running inside Google, where it patches security vulnerabilities, halves the compute behind YouTube comments, and debugs the physics simulator for Wing drones. Google has not said when or whether Plus subscribers and free users get access. The company says Argon competes with the industry’s best.
What matters
- Google launched Gemini 4 Argon today for Pro and Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app and Search.
- Argon’s intro pricing runs about a fifth of GPT-6 Astra, giving teams cheaper frontier reasoning.
- Google has not said when Argon reaches Plus or free users, and prices double at the end of November.
Why it matters
Google has not said when Argon reaches Plus or free users, and prices double at the end of November.
This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by The Verge. Source reference: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1009862/google-releases-gemini-4-argon.
Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.