--- title: "Gemini 4 Argon Official Launched to Consumer, Enterprise and Developers" date: 2026-10-13 author: "Barry Elad" featured_image: "https://sqmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gemini-4-argon-official-launched-for-everyone.jpg" categories: - name: "Artificial Intelligence" url: "/artificial-intelligence.md" tags: - name: "News" url: "/tag/news.md" --- # Gemini 4 Argon Official Launched to Consumer, Enterprise and Developers Google released Gemini 4 Argon worldwide on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, pricing its flagship AI model at an introductory $2 per million input tokens. The company says Argon now ranks first on the Vals Index, a benchmark covering finance, coding, legal and tax work. ## What Happened? - Gemini 4 Argon is available now to developers, enterprises and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers worldwide. - Argon scored 68.90% on the Vals Index, ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 at 66.97% and GPT-6 Astra at 63.13%. - Google’s launch rates double after November 30, and cached input tokens cost 95% less than standard input. - Google is widening its Fairwind Program, which gives vetted cyber defenders Argon without cyber guardrails, to hundreds more partners. ## Argon arrives cheaper than its closest rivals Argon follows a rough stretch for Google’s AI program. In September, Google dropped plans to ship Gemini 3.5 Pro, which CEO **Sundar Pichai** had said would arrive in June. The company also overhauled DeepMind after co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis stepped aside and several Gemini model leaders left. The release puts a new flagship at the top of Google’s [Gemini AI model lineup](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/google-gemini-ai-statistics/). Price is where Google pushes hardest. Argon’s introductory output rate is $10 per million tokens, and both rates move to **$4** and **$20** once the launch window closes. GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1 both list at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. On long-context work, the gap with Anthropic’s models opens up. Argon scored **99.7%** on GraphWalks, against 98.7% for GPT-6 Astra, 91.4% for Claude Fable 5.1 and 90.6% for Claude Opus 5.5. Google’s engineering claims are self-reported but specific. Teams using Argon in Antigravity raised agentic code submissions by more than 35% and cut code rollbacks by nearly a third, the company said. On the open **Gemma 4 E2B model**, Argon helped deliver a 2.85x inference speedup on an A100 via vLLM in a few days. Throughput climbed from about 37,900 to over 108,000 tokens per second, Google said in its [launch post](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/introducing-gemini-4-argon/). Access depends on the plan: - **Developers get the Gemini API paid tier, with Antigravity, AI Studio and Android Studio for Google AI Ultra subscribers.** - **Enterprises get Gemini for business, the API and Antigravity.** - **Consumers on Google AI Pro or Ultra get Argon in the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search.** - **Scientists can apply for 10,000 free six-month seats on Antigravity’s highest usage tier.** Deloitte, LexisNexis, Ambience Healthcare and Isomorphic Labs tested the model before launch. ## Cyber defenders get Argon without guardrails The cyber release carries the most risk. [Google’s Fairwind Program](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/google-gemini-4-argon/) gives vetted defenders a version of Argon with its [cyber guardrails](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/generative-ai-cybersecurity-threats/) removed. After a September rollout to select partners, Google is now opening it to hundreds more. Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google DeepMind SVP and Google’s chief AI architect, said trusted defenders would get Argon “**without cyber guardrails so they can leverage its full frontier-level cybersecurity defense capabilities.**“ The benchmark case for that access is narrow. On CWE-bench v1, which tests whether a model can fix security vulnerabilities, Argon tied at **68%** with Grok 4.7 and GPT-6 Astra. Claude Opus 5.5 scored 67%. ## Wiz Did the Testing for Argon Google’s showcase evidence comes from Wiz, a company Alphabet finished acquiring in March 2026. [Google](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/google-usage-statistics/) says Wiz used Argon to chain healthcare infrastructure flaws, surfacing a public file download bypass that exposed a master key and admin access. The fix protected hundreds of thousands of patient records, Google added. The announcement doesn’t name the healthcare operator or list a CVE identifier for the bypass. It also doesn’t explain how Google vets Fairwind partners or audits their use of an unguarded model. External bio red teaming unlocked less than 1% of the bio sub-tasks Google tests for, the company said. On Gray Swan’s Indirect Prompt Injection benchmark, attack success fell to **0.7%** across 15 adaptive attempts. Shortcut attempts on coding benchmarks dropped to 2%. Pichai also recently signed a voluntary White House Accord on Super Intelligence alongside [OpenAI](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/openai-statistics/), Anthropic, Meta, xAI and Nvidia. ## What’s Next? Teams already building on the Gemini API should cost long agentic jobs at post-launch rates now. The same workload bills at double the price after November 30. Google’s continuation protocol documentation covers runs that use the 1 million token unified input-output limit. That price step is the next fixed marker, and Google says the rest of the Gemini 4 family will follow. Definition of AI Inference. Link to full glossary entry follows the description.**AI Inference**AI inference is the execution phase where a trained AI model applies what it learned to new, unseen data and produces an output such as a prediction. [Read more](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/glossary/ai-inference/) Definition of Prompt Injection. Link to full glossary entry follows the description.**Prompt Injection**Prompt injection is an attack in which crafted input makes a large language model follow the attacker's instructions instead of its operator's. [Read more](https://sqmagazine.co.uk/glossary/prompt-injection/)