The news
Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon on 28 October 2026 and calls it its strongest model. It is built for cybersecurity and for long engineering work in many steps, and it builds on Gemini 4 Argon, which Google released two weeks earlier. Google says its own teams have seen Carbon work for days on multi-step engineering tasks, and that it writes secure code at more than twice Argon's success rate.
For now only a subset of cyber defenders can use it. Google will then widen access step by step to trusted partners through its Fairwind Program, an early access scheme for vetted defenders such as governments, operators of critical services like energy, healthcare and banking networks, and large technology platforms. Google says it will bring Carbon to developers, businesses and consumers "as soon as possible", but has given no date. The announced price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, the same introductory price as Argon, rising to $4 and $20 afterwards. Google has not said when Carbon's introductory period ends.
Google says Carbon ranks first on version 5.0 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 59, and scores 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro, a test of finding security flaws. These are Google's own figures. The model businesses can use today is Gemini 4 Argon, in the Gemini API, AI Studio and the Gemini app for Pro and Ultra subscribers. Its launch price ends on 30 November, and from 1 December it costs $4 and $20 per million tokens, as we reported earlier.
What it means for you
- Unless your organisation is a vetted cyber defender, you cannot use Carbon yet. For business work today, Gemini 4 Argon is the newest Google model you can use.
- Carbon's announced price after its introductory period, $4 and $20 per million tokens, is the same as Argon's from 1 December, so a budget at those rates covers both.
- Google aims Carbon at finding and fixing flaws in software. If it opens up as promised, it could help check the code your business runs on, but so far the results come from Google's own tests.
What to do now
- If you build on Gemini now, use Argon and plan your budget at $4 and $20 per million tokens from 1 December, not at the launch price.
- Make the AI model a setting in your tools rather than something fixed in the code, so you can test Carbon when it opens without a rebuild.
- If your company runs critical services such as energy, healthcare or payments, ask your Google Cloud account team about the Fairwind Program.
- Keep your security updates and code reviews going now. Do not wait for a new model to protect your systems.
How Didset can help
We build AI workflows that can switch between Gemini and other models, so you can test Carbon when it opens and keep whatever works best for each task.
Talk to us about it
