Google has made the Gemini 4 Carbon model broadly available after a short, limited-access test period. Two weeks prior to the public release, the company granted access to a few selected cybersecurity teams, who — according to Google — judged the model’s behavior to be safe.
How Carbon differs from previous models
Google describes Gemini 4 Carbon as the company’s most powerful model to date and says it can compete with top systems from Anthropic and OpenAI. About a month earlier Google had released Gemini Argon; the company still considers Argon an ideal choice for most software development and knowledge-based tasks, while positioning Gemini 4 Carbon for more demanding, “AI-stressing” jobs such as complex, multi-step programming problems.
To illustrate Carbon’s capabilities, Google shared examples including a game assembled by the AI and tasks that combine the model’s reasoning with visual materials such as blueprints.
Antigravity and Swarm: coordinated agent teams from a single command
Alongside Carbon, Google announced a new feature called Swarm on its Antigravity agent-development platform. Swarm enables users to spawn a coordinated team of agents from a single instruction, allowing multiple agents to work together on a task.
Availability and pricing
Gemini 4 Carbon is available immediately through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio, to Gemini for business enterprise and developer subscribers, via the Antigravity platform, integrated into the Gemini app, and to Google AI Ultra subscribers. Google has not specified when free Gemini users will gain access.
Usage pricing is currently set at $2 (about HUF 657) per one million input tokens and $10 (about HUF 3,280) per one million output tokens. The Verge notes these rates are roughly one-fifth of the cost of OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra and about one-quarter of Anthropic’s Fable 5.2. Google plans to double these prices at the end of November, but even after that increase the service may remain cheaper than competitors. Actual costs for users will depend on token consumption, which can vary by model for the same tasks.
Why it matters
The launch of Gemini 4 Carbon marks a significant upgrade in Google’s AI lineup: the company now offers a model tailored for complex, multi-step workflows and positions it competitively on price. The Swarm capability further signals Google’s investment in agent-based and multi-component AI systems.
