Overview

Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) shares rose approximately 2% in pre‑market trading on Thursday, 1 Oct 2026, after the company launched its latest artificial‑intelligence model, Gemini 4 Argon.

Model Availability and Pricing

Gemini 4 Argon will first be offered to a limited group of trusted cybersecurity researchers. Paid API customers and subscribers to Google AI Ultra will receive access next, followed by broader availability for developers, businesses and consumers. The launch pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with a 95 % discount on cached input tokens. For comparison, Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1 is priced at $10/$50 and Claude Opus 5.5 at $4/$20 for input/output tokens respectively.

Performance Benchmarks

  • Coding: The model achieved a record 77.9 % score on the DeepSWE v1.1 coding benchmark. It placed first on LLM Arena’s Text Arena coding leaderboard and ranked eighth on Code Arena: Web Dev, improving 21 positions over Gemini 3.8 Flash. On the more demanding FrontierSWE v2 test it trails the leading models.
  • Cybersecurity: Gemini 4 Argon can autonomously identify, verify and remediate software vulnerabilities. It tied with Grok 4.7 for the top score of 68 % on the CWE‑bench v1 vulnerability‑fix test. Its success rate against prompt‑injection attacks was 0.7 %, better than Claude Opus 5.5 (1 %) and Claude Fable 5.1 (1 %).
  • Other domains: The model performed strongly on automation, long‑form video generation and professional‑work tests covering finance, legal services and tax. Its token‑output limit was increased to 1 million tokens, up from 64 000, whereas Anthropic’s comparable models are capped at 128 000 tokens.

Early Rollout and Partnerships

For the initial cybersecurity rollout, Google will provide the model without some of its usual safety safeguards to trusted defenders and internal teams. Cybersecurity firm Wiz is using Argon through its “Scan for Good” programme. Google also states that it is already employing Argon internally for software development and data‑centre optimisation, though these internal uses have not been independently verified.

Analyst Commentary

Jefferies maintains a “buy” rating on Alphabet with a price target of $445. The brokerage notes that the stock has fallen 16 % from its May 18 peak, reflecting investor concerns that Alphabet could lag rivals while awaiting the forthcoming Gemini 4 Pro. Jefferies cautions that real‑world validation of the early benchmark results is required and that the infrastructure used to run and evaluate AI models is becoming increasingly critical to performance.

Future Safeguards

Google indicated that it will strengthen safeguards before a wider release, including continuous monitoring for misuse and intervening when necessary to prevent harmful actions.