Google says Gemini 4 Carbon is its next frontier model and a large step past Gemini 4 Argon, which launched two weeks earlier, as @OfficialLoganK announced. Access starts with a subset of cyber defenders, with wider release promised later. Google's launch post and 9to5Google carry the details.

Benchmarks and claims

Google says Carbon scores 59 and ranks first on version 5.0 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, which it says was recently updated. Its cybersecurity results are the centre of the pitch: 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro for finding vulnerabilities, 54.8% on ExploitGym for exploitation and 71.0% on CWE-bench for patching, each presented as a lead or state of the art. On WebDev Arena, Carbon gained 89 Elo points to reach 1769, placing fourth.

Google also reports internal results. Carbon more than doubles Argon's success rate at generating secure code, and the Chrome team found it far better than another lab's large frontier model at producing high-quality patches. Google says internal teams have seen it run for days on multi-step engineering work, such as root-causing and patching bugs across large codebases. These are Google's own figures.

Alignment

Google says Carbon reduced successful cheating on Terminal-Bench 4.0 to 0.0% and cut high-severity misalignment alerts in its internal live coding by almost 80%. Compared with Argon, it says Carbon cuts unsupported claims by about half and reduced overreach by 26% and under-service by 29% in multi-step tasks. On the Gray Swan indirect prompt injection benchmark, Carbon records a 0.0% attack success rate, against 0.7% for Argon, which had led that benchmark.

Price and access

Carbon launches at introductory pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input 95% off. After the introductory period, the price rises to $4 per million input and $20 per million output.

Per 1M tokens

Introductory

After introductory

Input

$2

$4

Output

$10

$20

Availability starts this week for a subset of cyber defenders, and Google will phase in more trusted partners through its Fairwind Program. Google says it will bring Carbon to developers, businesses and consumers 'as soon as possible', after gathering feedback and refining guardrails. It describes a deliberate rollout and says it is taking part in the U.S. government's voluntary pre-release model testing process.

Our read: for most developers, the post-introductory price and the timing of the wider release matter more than the cyber results.

Who should care

Security teams are first in line. Developers building on the API should plan around the price step-up after the introductory period and the 'as soon as possible' timeline. For background, see our earlier report on Carbon appearing in a model list and our coverage of the Argon launch.

Sources