Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on Wednesday, September 30, positioning it as its most performant model to date. The model targets complex, long-running software engineering, enterprise knowledge work, and cybersecurity defense, and Google says it is comparable to frontier models like OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Opus on key coding and cyber benchmarks.

Argon carries an industry-leading 1-million-token output limit, up from 64,000 in previous Gemini models, with announced API pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Google reported scores of 77.9% on DeepSWE v1.1, 91.7% on LVBench long-video understanding, and 68.9% on the Vals knowledge-work index — while conceding it trails on some coding benchmarks, including Terminal-Bench 4.0.

Access starts with trusted cyber defenders through the Fairwind Program, with paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers next; Google gave no timeline for general public release. The launch follows months of delays that saw Gemini 3.5 Pro scrapped, a DeepMind overhaul, and founder Demis Hassabis stepping aside. Google is also participating in the Trump administration's voluntary pre-release access process.