After facing some significant headwinds, Google’s flagship AI model appears to be back on course and ready to take on its competitors.
The company announced Tuesday that Gemini Astra 4 is now available to developers and business customers worldwide, following an initial testing period during which access was only given to a cohort of “trusted cyber defenders” via Google’s Fairwind Program. That kind of phased release—part safety protocol, part self-promotion—has become standard for frontier AI labs amid widespread anxiety over the dangers of misaligned AI.
For now, Argon is only accessible to paying customers through the API in AI Studio, Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers via the Gemini App, and Antigravity, Google’s agentic software development platform. It’s currently priced at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, but those rates will double starting in December. Even after those higher prices kick in, the model will be significantly cheaper than other frontier options; OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, for instance, costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. The affordability angle alone could therefore give Argon a competitive edge, despite its debut being somewhat dampened by reports of skepticism among some Google employees about the model’s performance in certain key areas, such as coding.
That’s far from the only setback Google has experienced in its AI buildout. 5 Pro was reportedly delayed while the company worked to strengthen its capabilities. Google has also recently lost some high-ranking researchers, including its longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean.
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