Google finally releases Gemini 4 Argon

JUST IN: Google releases its long-awaited Gemini 4 Argon model, claiming 'frontier reasoning' and improved performance that it says can compete with the best in the industry.

Google just dropped Gemini 4 Argon, and it's done hiding.

After months of watching OpenAI and Anthropic trade the crown, Google says Argon beats GPT-6 Astra and both of the new Claudes across coding, cybersecurity, science, finance and law. Big benchmark talk. The more interesting bit is what they're already doing with it in-house, patching their own security holes, and apparently halving the compute that runs YouTube's comments section. Yes, the comments needed a frontier model. Somehow that tracks.

The pricing is the real shot across the bow. Two dollars per million input tokens, ten on the way out. That's Google saying we have the cheapest data centres on Earth and we're happy to make this a price war.

One catch. It's rolling out to Pro and Ultra subscribers only, and Google won't say when, or if, free users ever get it. The frontier is open, but the gate has a turnstile.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.