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Google Launches Gemini 4 Carbon With Enhanced Cybersecurity Capabilities
· Confirmed
In Short: Building on Gemini 4 Argon, which was launched two weeks ago, Carbon illustrates the pace at which Google is pushing the frontier forward in AI capabilities.
Google today announced Gemini 4 Carbon, the latest iteration of its AI model designed to excel in cybersecurity and complex coding tasks. The new model shows significant gains across coding and agentic tasks, as well as critical cybersecurity defense capabilities.
According to Google's blog, Carbon ranks #1 on the recently updated v5.0 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 59, marking a firm lead in SEC-bench Pro (88.2%) for finding vulnerabilities, ExploitGym (54.8%) for exploitation, and CWE-bench (71.0%) for patching.
Gemini 4 Carbon will launch at the same introductory price as Argon, with $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, and cached input tokens priced at 95% off the input token price. After the introductory period, the cost will increase to $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens.
In particular, Google made significant strides in model alignment with Argon, as reported in its Safety and Security report. On internal benchmarks, Carbon drives a strong uplift in generating secure code and shows reduced misalignment and fabrication rates in live coding environments with Google's own teams.
Building on Gemini 4 Argon, which was launched two weeks ago, Carbon illustrates the pace at which Google is pushing the frontier forward in AI capabilities. Starting this week, Google will make Carbon available to a subset of cyber defenders and will gradually phase access to additional trusted partners through its Fairwind Program.
Google is continuing to gather feedback and iterate on guardrails before making Carbon available to developers, businesses, and consumers via its product surfaces as soon as possible. The company positions Carbon as the top of the Gemini 4 line, using phrases like 'our next frontier model' and 'our strongest model.'
The choice to prioritize cybersecurity and complex coding tasks suggests Google expects scrutiny about how Carbon behaves when it runs unattended, not only how well it scores. Google's Chrome team reported that Carbon performed more than 10X better than another lab's large frontier model when generating high-quality patches.
Anyone planning a migration or procurement cycle around Carbon today is planning around a promise, not a ship date. The gap between 'announced' and 'being tested' matters for anyone choosing a coding model this quarter.
What this adds
Google's announcement of Gemini 4 Carbon follows the launch of Argon two weeks ago. The new model is designed to excel in cybersecurity and complex coding tasks, with a focus on coding, agentic, and scientific tasks, as well as full-stack web development and multimodal understanding.
Testing on an internal coding platform like Jetski suggests what the lab cares about measuring. The model may be a new checkpoint of Gemini 4 Argon, though this is not confirmed.
A high score on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index suggests Carbon can triage large volumes of code, which is crucial for teams dealing with backlogs of unreviewed dependencies.
Background
Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon, its latest AI model designed to excel in cybersecurity and complex coding tasks.
Google today launched Gemini 4 Carbon, its latest AI model designed to excel in cybersecurity and complex coding tasks.
What's confirmed
- It shows significant gains across coding and agentic tasks as well as across key capabilities critical for cybersecurity defense, landing a firm lead in SEC-bench Pro (88.2%) for finding vulnerabilities, ExploitGym (54.8%) for exploitation, and CWE-bench (71.0%) for patching.
- Carbon ranks #1 on the recently updated v5.0 of Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 59.
- Gemini 4 Carbon will launch at the same introductory price 1 as Argon at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input tokens priced at 95% off input token price.
- Building on Gemini 4 Argon, which was launched two weeks ago, Carbon illustrates the pace at which we’re pushing the frontier forward.
- Starting this week, we will make Carbon available to a subset of cyber defenders and will gradually phase access to additional trusted partners through our Fairwind Program.
- We’re continuing to gather feedback and iterate on guardrails before making Carbon available to developers, businesses, and consumers via our product surfaces as soon as possible.
- Following the launch of Argon two weeks ago, Google today announced Gemini 4 Carbon as its next frontier model.
- Anyone planning a migration or a procurement cycle around Carbon today is planning around a promise, not a ship date.
- The choice suggests Google expects scrutiny about how Carbon behaves when it runs unattended, not only how well it scores.
- The Chrome team reported that Carbon performed more than 10X better than another lab's large frontier model when generating high-quality patches.
What's still developing
- Gemini 4 Argon reached general availability on October 13, according to developer-focused outlets such as Computing for Geeks, and engineers are already weighing it against Claude and OpenAI options in our GPT-6.1 Sol vs Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemini 4 Argon comparison.
- That person said Carbon’s coding “feels like Opus 5.5,” then cautioned that the model needed further testing.
- Short version: one unnamed Google employee told Business Insider that Carbon’s coding “feels like Opus 5.5,” and added that more testing was needed.
- The model may be a new checkpoint of Gemini 4 Argon, though the reporting does not settle that question.
- The reporting says employees have been trying a new Gemini 4 version labeled Carbon on Jetski, Google’s internal coding platform.