Google introduces Gemini 4 Carbon with initial access limited to trusted cyber defenders

What happened

Google introduced Gemini 4 Carbon on October 28, two weeks after Argon, with access starting this week for some trusted cyber defenders. Sundar Pichai says Carbon ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis’s v5.0 Intelligence Index at 59 and improves long-horizon tasks. Access will expand through the Fairwind Program before wider availability, with no specific date announced. Reported cybersecurity scores were measured with safeguards disabled.

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Reported by 9 sources

The story so far

Google DeepMind announced Gemini 4 Carbon with initial access limited to selected cyber defenders, while Artificial Analysis ranked it first on its Intelligence Index v5 with a score of 59. The model is not yet publicly available. Google said access would expand through its Fairwind Program to more trusted partners before reaching developers, businesses, and consumers, after further feedback and adjustments to safety guardrails. Carbon’s overall index score rose from Argon’s 50, according to The Decoder. Artificial Analysis reported that Carbon led four of nine evaluations, but its coding-agent score using Antigravity CLI was 59, behind Claude Opus 5.5 at 62. Google reported cybersecurity scores of 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro, 54.8% on ExploitGym, and 71.0% on CWE-bench, all measured without guardrails. Google also said Carbon was twice as likely as Argon to generate vulnerability-free code. Ars Technica noted that Carbon’s reported benchmark leads over competing frontier models were generally only a few points. The restricted rollout drew criticism from Nathan Lambert, who objected to announcing benchmark scores for a model he could not publicly use. He later softened that criticism, citing difficulties he had heard about in getting a frontier model released.