Google has released its new artificial intelligence model Gemini 4 Carbon to the general public, two weeks after first giving it to a limited group of users for cybersecurity, according to The Verge. The company claims that Carbon is its strongest model to date and that it can compete with the best systems from Anthropic and OpenAI.
According to Google, Carbon pushes boundaries beyond the Argon model, which was introduced last month. Argon will likely remain the ideal choice for most software engineering and knowledge work, while Carbon is intended for tasks that test the limits of model intelligence, such as complex multi-step coding and open-ended scientific research.
Google also announces a preview of the agent swarm feature on its Antigravity agent development platform. It is supposed to enable users to turn a single query into a coordinated team of agents. Carbon is available via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and in the Gemini for business offering for all paying developers and enterprises, as well as for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app, AI search mode, and on the Antigravity platform. It is not clear when, or whether, the model will be available to subscribers of lower tiers or free users.
Prices are, as with Argon, aggressively set. The introductory price is two dollars per million input tokens and ten dollars per million output tokens, which is about one fifth of the price of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model and one quarter of the price of Anthropic's Fable 5.2 model. When the introductory period ends at the end of November and prices double, Carbon will still be significantly cheaper than competitors per token, although that does not necessarily mean lower total costs.
What this means for businesses
For enterprises developing their own AI solutions, the introductory prices of Gemini 4 Carbon can significantly reduce the costs of experimentation and testing compared to competitors. The agent swarm feature on the Antigravity platform opens up space for automating more complex, multi-step tasks, but requires additional quality control and oversight. Companies should keep in mind that prices will double at the end of November and that the results cited by Google may be selectively presented.
This summary was written with AI based on the cited source and checked by automated rules. For exact details, read the original article.