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Google’s official blog dated October 28, 2026 (publication time corresponds to 01:00 Beijing time on October 29) announces Gemini 4 Carbon as its next frontier model, Google’s strongest yet for cybersecurity and long-horizon work. The post builds on Gemini 4 Argon is out globally — $2/$10 now, $4/$20 after November 30, launched two weeks earlier.
Rollout: Fairwind first, not a full public launch
Google describes a staged rollout. Starting this week, Carbon goes to a subset of cyber defenders, with access phased to additional trusted partners through the Fairwind Program. Feedback and guardrail iteration come before Carbon reaches developers, businesses, and consumers on product surfaces as soon as possible. Those audiences arrive soon. That is a staged partner path, not a claim that Carbon is generally available to every developer or consumer today. Public Gemini API documentation pages still lack a full Carbon mount for everyday API callers.
Pricing (same introductory price as Argon)
Carbon launches at the same introductory price as Argon: $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input tokens at 95% off the input price. After the introductory period expires, $4 / $20 per million input / output applies. The blog does not name an end date for that introductory window. For how Argon usage is counted across surfaces on this site, see Here's How Gemini 4 Argon Usage Is Counted in the Gemini App, Antigravity and the API in October 2026.
Scores Google cites—and what DigIntoAI has not retested
Google says Carbon ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.0 at 59, with gains in coding and agentic tasks. The same post cites cybersecurity results evaluated without guardrails: SEC-bench Pro 88.2% (finding vulnerabilities), ExploitGym 54.8% (exploitation), and CWE-bench 71.0% (patching). On WebDev Arena, Carbon jumps +89 elo to #4 (1768). Internally, Google says teams have seen Carbon run for days on multi-step engineering. For how the Index moved to v5, see Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index Moves to v5 — Private Benchmarks Now Dominate. The live board now lists Carbon at the top. For those benchmark scores, DigIntoAI has not retested them. For reference only.
This is a Google / DeepMind announcement of a staged Fairwind-first release. Availability windows and surfaces can change; details follow Google’s Carbon blog and DeepMind’s Gemini page. Hugging Face’s Carbon-X DNA is a different product with a similar name.