Google announces Gemini 4 Carbon, with access limited to cyber defenders at first
Announced · Published · By Contractor AI Shop
Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon, a frontier model aimed at long-running coding and agent tasks and cybersecurity defense. Access starts with a subset of cyber defenders through its Fairwind Program; broader availability is promised "as soon as possible." Contractors can't use it yet.
Key facts
- Google says Carbon ranks #1 on v5.0 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 59. Google Blog (Koray Kavukcuoglu)
- Google says it will make Carbon available to a subset of cyber defenders first and phase access to trusted partners through its Fairwind Program before developers, businesses and consumers. Google Blog (Koray Kavukcuoglu)
- The Verge (Emma Roth) reports it is currently only available to a select group of cybersecurity defense companies, at an introductory price of $2 per million input and $10 per million output tokens. The Verge (Emma Roth)
- 9to5Google (Abner Li) reports that after the introductory period it will cost $4 per million input and $20 per million output tokens. 9to5Google (Abner Li)
Our take: what it means for contractors
This isn't a construction story, but it's useful context if you're choosing models for agents. Nobody outside a small cyber-defense group can use it yet, so don't change plans around it.
What we don't know yet
- When developers and businesses get access
- When introductory pricing ends
- Independent benchmark checks
Sources
- Google Blog (Koray Kavukcuoglu) · Gemini 4 Carbon: our next frontier model · 2026-10-28 · Primary
- The Verge (Emma Roth) · Google launches Gemini 4 Carbon with a ‘significant leap’ in cybersecurity · 2026-10-28 · Secondary
- 9to5Google (Abner Li) · Google announces Gemini 4 Carbon with ‘significant gains across coding and agentic tasks’ · 2026-10-28 · Secondary