Gemini 4 Argon takes on ChatGPT and Claude: Google unveils its most powerful AI

Google is finally bringing out the heavy artillery. The Mountain View giant unveiled Gemini 4 Argon, its new high-end artificial intelligence model. It is also, and above all, the first model in the Gemini 4 family.You will need to arm yourself with patience before you can converse with the AI.

Today we’re introducing Gemini 4 Argon.

It delivers frontier performance in complex workflows across real-world software engineering, knowledge work, and cybersecurity defense with an industry-leading 1M token output limit. pic.twitter.com/oDaCoOLu5E

— Google (@Google) September 30, 2026

As the American giant explains, Argon is built for long tasks that require many reasoning steps. Argon was « designed to ensure thorough reasoning throughout complex, long-term workflows ». According to Google, Argon can produce up to 1 million tokens in a single response, compared with 64,000 previously.

On the benchmarks highlighted by Google, Argon outperforms Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra. Internally, Argon has already proven itself, Google says. « Thousands of Googlers highlight the strengths of this model for specialized coding tasks, in-depth research, and writing quality », assures Google. In particular, a team of agents powered by Argon applied optimizations in Google’s data centers, « thereby freeing up more than 300 Tio of memory », entirely autonomously.

Also read: At Google, AI has never been so expensive (and morale has never been so low)

Argon, Google’s weapon for cybersecurity

Nevertheless, cybersecurity is where Google is pulling out all the stops. According to the Mountain View-based company, Argon is capable of “detecting, validating and autonomously fixing critical software vulnerabilities”. In a vulnerability-remediation test, the model performs as well as GPT-6 Astra. During testing, the model “uncovered a critical vulnerability exposing sensitive personal data in healthcare software used by hospitals around the world”. It is a major risk “that previous models had missed”, Google emphasizes.

Lots of discussion out there about our next model(!), so I wanted to give an early look as soon as possible. Introducing Gemini 4 Argon!

It shows frontier performance in complex workflows, cyber defense and software engineering. Teams are using it extensively at Google, from… pic.twitter.com/sv4VNmQ0YT

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) September 30, 2026

For now, Argon is only “deployed to a trusted group of cybersecurity specialists”, through a program called Fairwind. Google says that “securely deploying cutting-edge features at this level requires a gradual approach”.Following the lead of OpenAI and Anthropic, Google prefers to offer access to its flagship model to carefully selected companies. Under the program, specialists and internal Google teams gain access to a version of Argon “without any safety restrictions”. For Tulsee Doshi, Gemini product lead, the goal is to get a powerful model “into the hands of defenders” as quickly as possible.

Also read: Google reignites the AI battle with 3 new Gemini models

Google’s most resilient AI

Before opening the floodgates to the general public, Google promises to strengthen AI safeguards. The model is also designed to “reject malicious requests while preserving legitimate scientific research.”According to Google, Argon would also be the most resistant of Google’s models to “prompt injections,” those traps that make it possible to manipulate an AI.

To prevent the AI from going beyond the user’s intentions, Google is also deploying restrictions “that monitor Argon’s reasoning and actions and halt execution if necessary”. Finally, Google says test environments are isolated and sealed off. The announcement of Argon comes one day after Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, signed an AI safety agreement with Donald Trump and other tech giants.

Google discusses a rollout in the near future, with no specific date. As expected, Google AI Ultra subscribers will be the first to test Argon. With the arrival of Gemini 4, Google is looking to make up ground on OpenAI and Anthropic, particularly in cybersecurity. Promised for last June, Gemini 3.5 Pro ultimately ended up being discontinued by Google because its performance was deemed disappointing.

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