Google Releases Gemini 4 Carbon for Select Cybersecurity Firms

What Happened

Google has released Gemini 4 Carbon, which it describes as its latest frontier model. According to The Verge, the announcement came on Wednesday, and the reports are dated 28 October 2026 [1][2]. Google says the model offers significant gains in coding, agentic tasks and cybersecurity [1].

Google’s own post describes Gemini 4 Carbon as its strongest model, with state-of-the-art cybersecurity and long horizon capabilities [2][3]. The main points Google gives are:

• Benchmarks: Google highlights Carbon’s top spot on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (v5.0), with Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra trailing behind [1]. Carbon also holds the number one spot on SEC-bench Pro, which measures an AI model’s ability to discover real-world bugs, and on ExploitGym, which measures how a model can turn a vulnerability into exploits [1].
• Improvements over Argon: Carbon is an upgrade on Argon, which Google released earlier this month [1]. Google says Carbon is better at finding vulnerabilities and generating secure code [1].
• Longer tasks: Google says the model is built for longer tasks. Its internal teams have seen it run for days, persisting through dead ends on complex, multi-step engineering tasks [1].
• Behaviour: According to Google, Carbon is better at avoiding shortcuts, resisting prompt injection attacks and collaborating with users [1].
• Honesty: Google says Carbon cuts unsupported claims by two times compared with Argon, which it presents as a step toward more transparency and honesty [1].
• Price: Carbon is priced at the same introductory rate as Argon: $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens [1].

The Verge reports that Carbon outperforms the top models from OpenAI and Anthropic on some benchmarks [1]. The figures above are Google’s own claims about its model, as reported by The Verge.

Who Is Affected

Access is currently limited to a select group of cybersecurity defense companies. Google says the model will eventually expand to other partners in its Fairwind Program [1]. Developers and teams working on coding or security tasks are the groups the announcement describes, but access to Carbon for anyone outside that group is not yet open [1].