Google unveils Gemini 4 Carbon, retaking the world's no. 1 spot on updated, harder benchmarks — but access is limited

VentureBeat · Carl Franzen · 2026-10-28 18:25 UTC

Carbon improves substantially over Argon in coding and knowledge work, but trails several rivals on professional tasks and records a higher hallucination rate than Argon on a factual-knowledge test.

Google announced its latest and most intelligent frontier AI model today: Gemini 4 Carbon promises improvements in cybersecurity and complex software engineering at the same introductory token prices as its previous flagship, Argon. It also claims the top spot in the world on most common enterprise benchmarks according to both Google's and outsiders' tests.

However, Google is initially granting access only to selected cybersecurity defenders in its curated "Fairwind Program," leaving most developers and businesses waiting for a broader release. Google says that broad release will come "as soon as possible" after "gather[ing] feedback and iterat[ing] on guardrails."

Independent evaluator Artificial Analysis places Carbon, using high reasoning, first on its Intelligence Index v5.0 with 59 points, ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 at 58, GPT-6 Astra at 57 and Argon at 50.

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