Google launches Gemini 4 Carbon with lower prices and new agent feature
The new model costs a fraction of its main rivals and includes a swarm capability for coordinated AI tasks.
By Meera Fletcher ·
Google is making its newest AI model, Gemini 4 Carbon, available to the general public today. The company released the tool to a small group of cybersecurity professionals two weeks ago. Google describes Carbon as its strongest model to date and says it can compete with top systems from Anthropic and OpenAI.
The company states that Carbon pushes technical limits further than its previous release, Argon. Google says Argon remains the better choice for most software engineering and knowledge work. Carbon is designed for complex, multi-step coding and open-ended scientific research that tests a model's intelligence.
Google is also previewing a swarm feature on its Antigravity platform. This feature allows users to turn a single prompt into a coordinated team of AI agents. The company is using this release to show how Carbon handles long-horizon work involving these agents.
Carbon is rolling out today through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio. It is also available for business users in Gemini for business and Antigravity. All Google AI Ultra subscribers will get access in the Gemini app and the AI Mode in Search. It is not yet clear when or if lower tier or free users will receive the model.
The introductory price for Carbon is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. This rate is about one-fifth the cost of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. It is also a quarter of the cost of Anthropic's Fable 5.2 model, which launched yesterday. Prices will double at the end of November when the introductory period ends. Even at the higher rate, Carbon remains cheaper than frontier rivals on a per-token basis.
Benchmarks cited by Google suggest Carbon is among the most powerful models on the market. The company's data places it behind Anthropic's Fable 5.2 on most metrics. Companies often select specific benchmark results to present their tools in the best possible light. This release follows closely on the heels of Argon, which launched last month.
For months, frontier AI development looked like a two-horse race between Anthropic and OpenAI. Google's rapid release of two major models in one month marks a decisive return to the forefront of AI research for the company.
