Gemini 4 Carbon becomes generally available on the Gemini API, the Gemini app and AI Mode
Confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 12 November 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra194 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5133 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen224 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7163 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 133 days before it.
Key facts
- ARC Prize (verified, Nov 10): ARC-AGI-3 65.1% in the standard harness ($7.2K) and 99.1% with the provider adapter ($4.6K); ARC-AGI-2 94.2% at $0.38/task; ARC-AGI-1 98.5%; 18 points above Argon on ARC-AGI-3 (standard harness)
- Available from 10 Nov 2026: Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Gemini for business (all paying developers and enterprises), Android Studio; Google AI Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search and Google Antigravity
- API id gemini-4-carbon; introductory price $2 / $10 per 1M tokens, the same as Gemini 4 Argon (Google earlier gave $4 / $20 as the price after the introductory period)
- Google: #1 on CursorBench 4.0, Perplexity’s WANDR and Zapier’s AutomationBench ‘at more than 2X lower cost per task compared to the next best external model’; #2 on Artificial Analysis’s new Multimodal Knowledge Agent benchmark at over 6x lower cost per task than the leader
- Uses more tokens than Argon to ‘explore thoroughly, reason deeply, and run extended verification loops’; Google still calls Argon ‘the ideal choice for the majority of software engineering and knowledge work’
- Antigravity previews /swarm: one prompt becomes a coordinated team of agents with parallel isolated workspaces and adversarial verifiers
- Cyber capabilities without the consumer mitigations remain limited to the Fairwind Program; scientists can apply for 6 months free via Antigravity
- Knowledge cutoff March 2026 (DeepMind model card); our no-search probe on 2026-11-10 confirmed it: correct details for six Jan–Mar 2026 events, ‘DON’T KNOW’ for five April–June 2026 events
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- Independent standing on release day: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 60 (high), behind Claude Fable 5.2 at 65 (released the day before) and ahead of Opus 5.5 at 59
What happened
Gemini 4 Carbon was announced on 28 October 2026 but released only to cyber defenders in Google DeepMind’s Fairwind Program. On 10 November Google opened it to everyone who pays: developers through the Gemini API and AI Studio, enterprises through Gemini for business, and Google AI Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app, AI Mode and Antigravity. The price is Argon’s introductory price, which makes Carbon the cheapest per token of the three top models on Artificial Analysis’s index, though Google says it spends more tokens per task than Argon.
Why it matters
For two weeks the best-scoring model on several independent boards could not be called by the public; it now can, one day after Anthropic’s Fable 5.2 overtook it on Artificial Analysis. The release also changes practical choices: our long-context pick moves from Argon to Carbon.
Sources
5 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
5 sources: 4 primary, 1 reaction
Primary
- Google: Gemini 4 Carbon is now available (Koray Kavukcuoglu)blog.google, official
- Gemini API docs: gemini-4-carbonai.google.dev, docs
- Gemini 4 Carbon model card (knowledge cutoff March 2026)deepmind.google, docs
- Google AI on X: availability announcement (73k views)x.com, official
Reactions
- ARC Prize on X: Gemini 4 Carbon verified scoresx.com, discussion
Changes
- ARC Prize verified scores (news agent)
- Filed (owner’s tip)